


Words of Another Time: #2 The Ambush

by Penguin45



Series: Words of Another Time [2]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:48:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27336697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penguin45/pseuds/Penguin45
Summary: My Name is Rachel. Thanks to some intergalactic meddling and a quick decision on Marco's part we've been given a chance to fix our old mistakes. Problem is, so has Visser Three. Other problem is, we're doing our best not to make new ones along the way but our best might not be good enough.
Series: Words of Another Time [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1965349
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	Words of Another Time: #2 The Ambush

**Chapter 1**

* * *

My name is Rachel. You don’t really need to know anything beyond that. Oh, I know that if a Controller stumbled across these they would be able to pinpoint us to a general area. For one thing, it’s not like the ‘Andalite Bandits’ have shown up all over the world or even the country. The Yeerks have a good idea where we are. And you know that our city is near a state park, and that we have a big zoo and amusement park in our town. That we aren’t too far from an ocean where a friend of ours is possibly still trapped under. Probably other things that someone who knew what to look for could figure out that I haven’t even considered.

But even knowing all that there are still anywhere from a few hundred thousand to a few million people I could possibly be. So when we talked about it, I voted yes that the risks were worth it to leave these behind. So that our story would one day be told, and hopefully to someone who was free to appreciate what that really meant.

Long story short, alien parasites want earth. Want us. The big blue cavalry is supposed to show up one day but until then we’re the only things keeping the Yeerks from running away with the game. Now you’re up to speed.

And at that moment, so was I. A speed of around one hundred miles per hour, hurtling towards the ground that rushed up at me. The greatest Olympian gymnast had nothing on me right then as I plummeted down to earth making just the tiniest adjustments along the way. I felt no fear. Because right then I was a Bald Eagle, King of the Skies.

(Yaaaaaaaaaaaaah!) I screamed out in joy at the thrill of it. This is going to sound horrible but I was a little depressed that we had come back into the past only for my eagle not to be waiting for me in Cassie’s barn. Cassie shot me a dirty look when she told me her dad had taken him in last night. I might – _might_ – have squealed at the news, right there in homeroom.

((Yeah yeah, enjoy it while it lasts,)) Jake grumbled, a few hundred yards to my left and rapidly eating my dust. Jake and I are cousins and we’ve always had a competitive streak between us, and his favorite bird morph the peregrine falcon can beat the eagle in a dive (but not cruising speed) but as it hadn’t arrived yet he was still stuck as a raven, which doesn’t beat the eagle at anything, ha!

((All in good time, Jake)) Tobias chuckled from overhead both of us.

((Yeah well the raven is really not happy flying near a hawk and an eagle one especially one so energetic,)) Jake called back. ((How much further?))

I came out of my dive so as not to get out of thought-speak range. We’re still not sure how it works but in open air we definitely have longer ranges than inside buildings. Sill, there are limits and Tobias was riding a thermal over a parking lot ever higher. Tobias, Jake, and I were flying at the edge of town, heading towards downtown. It was just two days after our trip to the Yeerk Pool, and we were trying to piece together what we could from the things the Controllers – temporarily freed in their cages – had been able to pass on about the Yeerk plans.

((About ten minutes,)) Tobias replied. ((There’s the campus up ahead – 33rd runs right into it. Then we just follow all the way down for a few miles and we’re golden.))

We flew on, over the college and then along the usual sort of fast food and book store combo that you find right outside any campus in the country. We flew loosely so that anyone watching wouldn’t hopefully get two curious about what a hawk and an eagle were doing chilling in the same general area. Bald Eagles tend to attract attention. We had thought about going full raven but as good as raven eyes are, the hawk and eagle were even better.

((This is it,)) I called out. ((Look there’s the railway tracks and Oak Street dead ends right there – it’s just a warehouse. What do the Yeerks want with it?))

Nobody said anything, we just circled around again. This was definitely the place, but it was just three big warehouse looking buildings just off the railway line and some big metal overhanging thing going between the tracks and a concrete platform parallel to the warehouses, nothing out of place just one bored looking security guard out front.

((I don’t know,)) Jake said at last. ((It’s too far out to be connected to the Yeerk Pool, right?))

((Could be connected by an underground hallway I guess, but yeah the main complex doesn’t come out this far,)) Tobias replied at once, voice certain. I believed him – Tobias had spent hours upon hours tracking Controllers and mapping a literal bird’s eye view of Yeerk activity – if he hadn’t seen any Yeerks come out this far, I believed him.

Jake sighed. ((We think we know what the deal with the hospital is at least, and I guess it’s useful to know they were actually starting earlier than we originally thought. Maybe we can put them out of business before it gets as far as last time.)) We had busted up the Yeerk hospital operation the first time around, even if it had ended with Jake being a Controller for three days before we starved out his Yeerk. A Yeerk originally intended for our governor.

((For all we know, they were just screaming about why they were a Controller,)) I offered. ((I mean, we already knew they had infiltrated the police. There’s no reason to think we’d pick up anything further from that.))

((The spy game takes time, guys)) Tobias reassured. ((It takes patience – whatever clues we got, we’ll piece them together, it’s just going to take diligence. It took me a long time to piece things together the first time from up high but we did it.))

((Yeah, I know.)) Jake admitted, but he sounded tired. ((It still would have been nice if something had screamed Yeerk.))

And then we heard the horn of the train.

A long train, maybe forty or fifty carriages long, all carrying those closed standard box containers that can go from ship to train to truck. We hung around for a little bit longer, but nothing happened. Nothing that said Yeerk so much as just said regular old human industry. A big crane on a rail I had seen earlier sprung into action, latching onto one of the containers and then lifting it up and moving it onto a cement loading bay by the first warehouse. A garage opened and… forklifts emerged. A team of guys in hardhats unlocked the container and the forklifts began moving out massive pallets, locked in plastic cases.

((It’s getting late,)) Jake said after a while of watching the train unload. ((We’ve been in morph for almost an hour – I don’t think we’re going to catch anything going on right now. I have to get home before dinnertime.))

((I’m supposed to be watching my sisters tonight)) I added. I don’t know – maybe I just felt bad about mentioning our families when not two nights ago Tobias had said he was planning on faking his own runaway again because being a hawk on the run was better “for the team” than staying with his uncle. ((Tobias, you wanna come? We’re ordering pizza and as soon as homework is done we’ll probably end up watching some sickly cheerful thing Sara likes, but it would help pass the time if you were there.))

((Huh? Yeah um – that sounds good actually. Thanks,)) Tobias replied, though he sounded a little distracted. ((You guys circle off for a sec, I’m getting a closer look.))

((Be careful,)) Jake said.

Tobias scoffed. ((I’ll be fine, I know the hawk, nobody is going to notice anything out of place.)) Jake and I peeled off, maybe a little too cleanly based on Tobias’s mildly chiding response about birds not being airplanes, but nobody on the ground noticed anything. We watched as Tobias landed on one of the box cars, watching the crewman work.

((So, dinner and a movie, huh?)) Jake asked in private thought speak, voice tinged with amusement.

((Shut up cuz,)) I replied without any real bite.

((For real I think it’s good. I worry about him,)) Jake said after a second.

((Yeah, me too.))

Tobias let out a cry and then dove off the train – I realized then that there was a shrew hiding in the shadow of the rail. Tobias missed it by a hair, and with another cry flew up in our general direction.

((Well, I think we learned something very important,)) Tobias said with a smug note in his voice. ((And I think we should all be very grateful that while the red-tailed hawk might not have the dive of the falcon or the cruising speed of the eagle, it has something both those clowns – no offense Rachel – lack.))

((A sense of modesty?)) I asked.

((No, a sense of smell.))

((What, you were able to pick something up?)) Jake asked, cautious enthusiasm tinging his voice.

((Ohhhh yeah. Guys I think it’s definitely Yeerks. Because who else would be shipping fifty train cars of rotting meat into the city.))

That was the last answer I was expecting.

((Why would the anyone but why would the _Yeerks_ need that? Let alone that much? They can’t feed that to Controllers.))

((Not Human Controllers,)) Jake added, enthusiasm replaces with nausea.

A very, _very_ gross lightbulb went off in my brain. ((Not Hork Bajir either. Oh god no – acquiring one was bad enough.))

((Yep,)) Tobias finished. ((I think we’ve found how the Yeerks are feeding their Taxxons on Earth. We have to destroy it – that would be a serious blow for the Yeerks to lose their Taxxon force here.

Taxxons are a nasty species, like giant cannibal centipedes but ten feet tall and wide enough you couldn’t hug one even if you wanted to. Ax told us many of them aren’t even Controllers, and from what we’ve seen even the ones that are have a hard time controlling the Taxxon hunger. But, despite how repulsive they look they are a seriously useful species apparently. The Yeerks use them as pilots and engineers on their ships. They can dig tunnels, the can swim and while they make awful soldiers in a fair fight I’ve seen Visser Three use them as a sort of Terror Guard against his own subordinates, a role they’re really good at.

And beyond that, I didn’t want them on Earth. If we could get rid of them, I was for it.

((We’ll tell the others tomorrow – this might be our next mission after the Kandrona. We’ll talk)) Jake finished our thoughts as we flew back towards the neighborhood Jake and I both lived.

We had a nice night. My sisters are adorable when they aren’t annoying, and with pizza and a new guest over they didn’t even complain too hard about having to do their homework first, or in Sara’s case “quiet reading time”, which makes Jordan roll her eyes as if she wasn’t in the same boat a few years earlier. So yeah, it was nice.

I just couldn’t shake the thought of whether or not Tobias had missed the shrew on purpose.

“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” Marco interjected for the fifth time when we were recounting our intelligence coup the next afternoon in Cassie’s barn. “I’m not. In fact, I think you’re probably right.” He paused. “But you don’t _know_ , right? You didn’t see any Taxxons or any Yeerk tech or anything at all except a warehouse by the tracks _behaving_ like a warehouse by the tracks.”

“They were very organized about it,” Jake supplied. “No talking or goofing off.”

Marco rolled his eyes. “Oh well guys with forklifts were taking their jobs seriously obviously they’re aliens. C’mon man – I’m sure the poker table was inside but when you got stuff to move you’ve got stuff to move. All I’m saying is we need to be sure about this before we go in all Lions and Tigers and Bears.”

“I have the name of the foreman and two of the operators,” Tobias cut in. He shrugged when I gave him a look. “I didn’t think to mention it last night but I got names from their badges. We look them up and we survey them, see if they connect with any Controllers we know or to the pool. That’s our proof.” He paused for a moment, then added with a touch too much force, “Which we could have a lot faster if I wasn’t still in school.”

Awkward silence fell. Tobias had sprung the news while we were heading to the Yeerk Pool that he’d been thinking of going back to full time hawk, only this time I guess staying human just… spending his days in the sky mapping out the Yeerks again. Last time around, he had just disappeared when he’d been stuck as a hawk, and Jake just told his aunt and uncle he was living with the other, and that was that. He hadn’t followed through yet this time round, but it was clear he was ready to bolt and the truth was we needed him to. None of us could except him.

But personally, I felt very differently about it. I didn’t want Tobias losing himself in the hawk again. If he did this, I couldn’t help but think at some point, he would once again find himself over the two hour limit.

“Speaking of intelligence,” Marco cut in after a while, painfully bringing us out of our imposed silence. “I’ve been rewriting our list of known controllers, although to be honest I don’t know if all of them actually are Controllers yet.” He pulled out a book, just one of the dollar ninety-nine binded notebooks you can pick up anywhere. “And it’s been freaking me out having this on me all day and Ax isn’t here yet to keep it so this needs to go someplace else.”

“You’ve just been writing Controller names in a book?” I snatched it, opening it up to the first page. “Orc name ideas…Forgz Simashim?”

“Yeh Rachel, I just wrote down a bunch of Controllers full names in a book anyone could find.” Marco rolled his eyes, his tone genuinely biting. “It’s a code. Anyone will just think I’m a video game nerd if they find it. But see Forgz is five letters and the _F_ and _Z_ tell you that it’s actually a five letter name beginning with E and ending with Y. The last name begins with R and ends in L and eight letters.”

I stared at it a little more. Then it clicked. “Oh, got it – ok which one’s she?”

“She worked at the McDonald’s. One of our Happy Meal with Extra Happy pool guards.”

I didn’t want to admit it but I was impressed. Granted there were no more than twenty names here but that was twenty more than I remembered.

“Ok, fair enough,” I said instead, handing him back the book. “But Ax should be here again soon and then he can safeguard all the stuff like this.” He stuffed the notebook back in his bag, not looking particularly thrilled.

“Speaking of that, how much more time do we want to give Ax before we go looking for him ourselves?” Cassie asked. She was quieter than normal, Jake didn’t go into details but Cassie had taken our trip down the Yeerk Pool badly. Between the stress she was going through with that and the Yeerks possibly targeting her mom at The Gardens, and Tobias’ revelation of wanting to go on the lam… we weren’t even a week back in the past and things were beginning to unravel.

“Two weeks,” Jake said with complete certainty. “We’ll take care of the current situation first, and then go after Ax.” I agreed. Unless Ax came to us, it was a weekend job to go rescue him. We had this coming weekend and then after that The Sharing was going to The Gardens. If Ax was still MIA at that point, we’d send the rescue party out.

“The plan now though has to be the Kandrona,” I picked up, looking over everyone as I did. “We have a chance to do some real serious damage to the Yeerks again, and there’s no way they can go on a recruitment drive if they’re scrambling just to keep what Yeerks they do have, alive.”

No one had anything to say to that. No one wanted to remember what the Yeerks did to the hosts of the Yeerks they _couldn’t_ keep alive.

“The Kandrona is still in the EGS tower, near as I can tell,” Tobias added. “I flew over it after I left Rachel’s and even at night there was a huge updraft of heat coming from the building.

“So we stick with the plan. Tomorrow night we’re still on, right?” I looked at Jake and Marco. They both nodded. We were going back to the beach Friday night for another of The Sharing’s ‘beach parties’. The plan wasn’t to do any hard spying just see if we could figure out how much we had rattled the Yeerks and try to figure out why Visser Three had been absent this time around. Our biggest worry Monday night would be having to fight the Visser and then he hadn’t even shown up. I was a little annoyed about it.

Cassie had chores to get to Friday night if she was going to be free Saturday, and Saturday was the big one. First thing in the morning, we were going to land on the roof of the EGS towers, use our (well – mine, Marco’s and Cassie’s) Taxxon morphs to dig into the EGS tower from the roof this time, totally bypassing the need for the elevator, and smash the Kandrona.

“Time for a night off, I think,” Jake added. “We’ve had enough fun the last few afternoons scoping out sites around the city, but I have a history paper that isn’t going to write itself.”

“And I need to get to the mall. I was too busy worrying about the Yeerks last time but there’s a sale going on right now and I’m not missing it. Cassie, come with?”

“And there it is folks, the other side of Xena we all so know and love,” Marco added, before he and Jake headed out, giving me a wink when we both pretended not to notice Jake and Cassie squeeze hands.

Tobias didn’t say anything, just made his own excuses and left. I suspected he was going to go back flying, maybe just enjoying the sky maybe follow a Controller, but either way escape gravity and everything that came with it. I thought about asking him along, but honestly I think that would just make it worse. Like I was part of what was smothering him. Last night had been nice, but I needed some time with Cassie. Our relationship had had some tense moments over the first Yeerk war, and while in some ways we were closer, if she was going through something right now I needed to make the extra effort to reach out.

We didn’t say much on the way to the mall. We walked around the department stores, but nothing really caught my eye which made me sad in a way; I used to live for this stuff. I guess I hadn’t really realized how much I had changed until suddenly reliving the beginning. I said as much to Cassie, and she just gave me a sad little laugh.

“I’m always here for you,” I said at last as we passed the ugliest bedding display imaginable and made our way out and over to the food court. “You know that right?”

“I do,” Cassie replied quickly. “Sorry – it’s just everything is so weird isn’t it? Yesterday in the clinic my dad brought in two deer; they both had been in different car wrecks and I suddenly remembered them and I already know one is going to live and one is going to die and I’m not sure if I can do anything differently or if I even should but if I don’t what does that say about life or about me or ab-“

“Cassie,” I shook her arm gently, bringing her back. “We just do our best. What we think right as best we can.”

“I killed him,” she whispered. “The cop at the school, I don’t know if you – if you knew. I mean he cut off Marco’s _arm_ and he put a giant hole in your ear and if either shot had been a little different either of you or both of you could be _dead_. And the wolf just saw its pack being hurt and I jumped.” Cassie swallowed thickly. “And I don’t know if I’m more upset about the wolf jumping, or about knowing I was jumping to, or that the wolf jumped first, or that I should jump at all.”

“I’m glad you did,” I said back, soft but full of conviction. “I’m… I’m sure he was a good guy. But it’s the Yeerks that should pay for this. For using us like, like human shields. Hostages. You did what you have to do.” I paused. “It’s doing it again though, that’s what’s eating you up, isn’t it. It’s not enough that we made hard decisions once, it’s knowing what those decisions mean and then doing them anyway.” I thought about the people who were going to be killed by the Yeerks to keep them silent if we destroyed the Kandrona. To keep them silent when they’re Yeerks starved.

“The Yeerks deserve the blame. They’re evil. They’re an evil race.”

Cassie shook her head. “I can’t believe that anymore, not after Aftran.” She put up a hand to stall my response. “I know you all think I was crazy and to be honest I think the reason you aren’t giving me as much grief as you want to is that in some way it hasn’t happened yet. But no, the Yeerks… they are what they are. It’s their nature, it’s how they were designed to be. It’s not their fault and I know that doesn’t mean we can just allow them to conquer Earth. But it’s not entirely malicious.”

“Visser Three is,” I cut back.

Cassie nodded. “Ok, yes. Individual Yeerks maybe. But not all of them. Maybe some can be saved. And maybe we can save more people that way too.”

I shrugged. “Maybe,” I hedged, not really wanting a fight with Cassie when my goal had been to spend time repairing bridges. “I don’t know. I guess first we need to shut down whatever Visser Three is up to now. Hey look –” I pointed to a store we hadn’t been into yet. “Maybe we can find something cute that you can get for Jake, his birthday is next month.”

“Oh, I don’t know we’re not officially – oh fine,” she sighed in defeat and yes, I might have giggled at her hopeless expression. “Ok, yeah, you can help. I’m terrible at gifts.” We managed to go the rest of the evening without talking about Yeerks, before it was time to head home. My mom’s an assistant district attorney in town, and on a pretty fast track, so I was watching the girls again tonight. I didn’t mind – really, I don’t. The first time around, I did a little bit. But now it’s that last bit of normality in my life and I appreciate it.

The next night I remembered how much I appreciated it. My cousin Tom – or more accurately, the Yeerk in my cousin Tom’s head – was thrilled that we were coming back to another Sharing party for the second week in a row. He not-so-subtly hinted that we should think about coming to more of their events, and even mentioned that there was a big thing at The Gardens soon.

“Maybe,” Jake hedged. It sucks, but Jake’s really good at talking to Tom and keeping his poker face about the Yeerks.

Tom laughed. “Well you guys have fun tonight. I have to go meet up with Ronnie and Chloe – maybe I’ll see you later.”

I looked at Jake, who shrugged. The names didn’t mean anything to him either. “Later, Tom.”

We hung out, we played some volleyball. Marco did a bad job hitting on a girl that we were pretty sure was a Controller. It was fun – not for the first time it was easy to see how the Yeerks could sucker so many people this way.

“No go, Marco?” I asked when he came back from the surf, sipping on my diet lemonade courtesy of the Yeerks.

“Oh contraire, Xena,” Marco gave me a wooden smirk, walking to the refreshment table and grabbing a drink of his own. “Tom had mentioned me in fact. I’m quite the cute catch.” He turned back to me, and as he turned away from the possible Controller making drinks his smirk curdled into a sneer. “This happened last time too, but earlier.”

I was shocked. “You went on a date with a C- with you know?!”

He shook his head, grabbing my arm and pulling me a little further away. “No, Tom… a few weeks from now, he asked me about my dad and how I should come to the Sharing and bring him along. But it’s earlier than last time,” Marco was still holding my arm, and his hands were trembling.

A chill went through me. “You think they’re coming after us specifically?” I hissed. Marco was silent for a moment, then shook his head.

“No. If they did that, Tom would have got Jake on Saturday. But I think that the-” he looked around, then started moving back again towards the surf. I followed. His voice hushed, “I think that Visser Three didn’t just come back with us. I think there’s more at stake here. I think that when the Ellimist gave us the chance to chase Visser Four, that Visser Three got a couple of boosts as well when _we_ used the Time Matrix ourselves. For all we know, the current version of Visser Four got a chance to chase us as well. Maybe others too. Afterall, six of us got to chase after Visser Four.”

That made a certain amount of sense. The Ellimist was supposedly on our side, but I’d seen enough of his tricks to know that wasn’t a guarantee of anything. And then, there was Crayak who was even a whole different level of bad and personally had a vendetta out for us, especially Jake.

“If it’s them, then this is so far out of our league it’s not even funny,” I said as we reached the surf, the waves washing out under my feet. I took a sip of my drink, trying to look like I was just hanging out at the beach not thinking about two godlike beings with a reasons to want to kill us.

“On the plus side, you know ok not really plus, but about you,” I changed the topic slightly, “maybe Tom just mentioned it earlier because you’re coming to The Sharing, right? Maybe last time around he asked you as early as he could. They know your dad is a scientist right? Tom’s Yeerk does, so maybe there’s nothing more here than just a slight change because of what we’re doing.”

Marco nodded at that – say what you will about Marco constantly poking holes in other people’s plans, he can take it too. “An engineer more but yeah that’s true, but we need a way to really figure out what is going on, or at least how Visser Three is directing his forces this time round.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, sure. But how?”

I expected a sarcastic response. Instead I heard nothing – I looked up at Marco and he was staring out into the sea. “We know that every day at seven, Visser Three contacts Chapman, right? In that little sub-basement thing under Chapman’s house.”

“Yeah but, Marco – the only way in is-”

“Is ants, yeah. And no way we’re getting in that way. I’m sorry but I’m never doing ants again even if we did just morph the right ant colony this time. And there’s another way in to remember, but that won’t work either – if Visser Three sees Chapman’s cat in there again he’ll kill you.”

I nodded. I had snuck into Chapman’s communication room twice as Melissa Chapman’s cat, Fluffer McKitty. It ended up with me trapped in a cage and rescued by the others from Visser Three with minutes before being either trapped in morph or killed, probably both. It was also when we learned our assistance principle had volunteered to be a Controller to save his daughter.

“Right, so no ant, and no cat. So what?”

Marco shook his head. “No, the cat is actually not a bad idea, just as long as you don’t go down _there_. The Chapman’s spoke in their kitchen you said, right? So we might still pick stuff up that way. But no – what we really need to do is get a tape recorder, a good one with as much tape as possible and a good mic, down there. And neither a cat or ant can do that.”

I frowned. Marco jerked his head and I looked over, seeing Jake coming towards us in the dying sunlight. “We need a morph that can get into Chapman’s house. Into the special room. Can carry a recorder and set it up in that room. It’s not a morph that some people are going to like.”

I waved at Jake. “What morph?” I asked out the side of my mouth.

“Mr. Chapman.”

“Don’t say anything to Jake yet,” Marco continued in a rush. “Let’s make sure we have a plan we can share with the others before we get into another debate over morphing people – especially since this is someone we’re close with.”

“We’ll bring Tobias in, then sort something out before suggesting it to Jake and Cassie.”

“Agreed.”

“Done. Hey, Jake!” I gave him a quick hug as he joined us.

“You guys ready to go?” Jake asked, looking back in the direction he had come. “Things are getting a little tense.”

“Oh?”

“I didn’t get close,” Jake told us after we were off the beach and along the boardwalk. “But I didn’t need to. The dog’s nose could pick up the anger coming from the dunes from a mile away. Whatever the Visser is telling them, I think we still spooked them.”

“Well if all goes well, by this time tomorrow they’ll have a lot more to worry about.” I liked that. I liked that a lot.

* * *

**Chapter 2**

* * *

I woke up before dawn, slamming off my alarm almost instantaneously so as not to wake my mom or sisters. I stayed in bed for five minutes, making sure everyone really _really_ was asleep. The house was silent, and on tiptoe I opened the window in my bedroom. Then, with another pause just to be sure, I began to morph. Not even two minutes later I was out into the night sky, an owl silently flying up into the darkness and heading for downtown. It wasn’t a way I usually saw the world, even in bird morph. It was peaceful, almost. It wouldn’t be peaceful for long. I landed on an office building two blocks south of the EGS tower. Tobias was already there.

((Hey partner,)) I said. We were on opposite ends of the building, but with our bird eyes and thought speak that wasn’t exactly an issue, and with the lights on around town even at this hour, even Tobias’ in hawk morph wasn’t exactly blind.

((Hey yourself,)) he replied, his hawk head swerving around left and right until he saw me, then hawk eyes glaring with laser intensity. ((It still shocks me how spooky owls are,))

((Well now you have one yourself, too,)) I tried for joviality. Tobias stayed silent. I didn’t like it – not with another life threatening mission on the line. ((I didn’t mean it like that - and for the record, I’ll support you one hundred percent. I’ll even play the flimflam on your aunt and uncle this time if you want.))

He was silent for a little longer. Then, ((thanks, Rachel. That means a lot.))

((It’s nothing,)) I tried to wave off… literally, one of my owl wings somewhat awkwardly flapping out. Tobias laughed in my head. I continued without missing a beat. ((Hey once this is over come by my place, okay? Marco and I need to run an idea by you.))

((Something Jake and Cassie aren’t going to be keen on?)) Tobias, sharp as ever. But he wasn’t accusatory, just curious.

((Jake will probably be okay with it, or at least he’ll be reasonable about it if we have a plan. Basically Marco and I were talking last night and we’re thinking what if we could get a few cameras or microphones into Chapman’s house, and a way to reliably get the footage or whatever out.))

((Yeah, I can see where Jake’s going to have a problem – we’re going to have to steal some pretty decent equipment aren’t we?))

I was silent for a minute. ((We hadn’t even thought of that,)) I admitted. ((Mostly we were thinking that the best way to get into the house and take stuff in and out would be to _be_ the Chapmans, and I know we have problems with that.))

((I don’t. But yeah, Cassie won’t be thrilled.)) That was putting it mildly. ((On the other hand, Chapman was a voluntary Controller because he wanted to protect his daughter. So he’d probably let us borrow a copy of his body to keep her free, right?))

((Yeah, maybe.)) I said, before clearing my head. ((Anyway, it’s just some rough ideas. I don’t know what Marco has planned for this afternoon but knowing him it’s probably best to let him cool off after we destroy the Kandrona, so we can talk, yeah?))

((Sure. Oh hey, there’s either Cassie or Marco right there.))

I saw an owl flying in low, a spitting copy of my own morph. ((How do you know it’s not Jake?))

He laughed in my head again, slightly teasing. ((Because about half a mile behind you is a falcon grabbing as much air as it can to go into full dive right on us and it’s still half an hour from sunrise.

It was Cassie. Jake dove down on us a minute later, slightly abashed by his antics, and Marco was another few minutes after that.

((Alright, I’m pretty sure last time round I gave up Saturday morning cartoons as soon as I started risking my life for an intergalactic war against brain slugs, so if we can get a move on I can be home and on the couch celebrating a job well done and I won’t even be forced to watch reruns.))

((Marco, Marco, Marco,)) I chided as we set off together for the EGS tower itself. ((When are you going to realize that nobody is buying your attempt to bury your enthusiasm at infiltrating an alien base before breakfast.))

((Not true,)) he replied. ((Being the intelligent member of the team, I took Pop Tarts to bed last night. If I die, at least I had my last sweet chocolate filled pastry before hand.))

We landed. We demorphed except for Tobias, who kept a lookout as Jake went to tiger. We were shoeless as usual after a morph but the cement under my feet was warm.

“Kandrona, has to be,” Cassie replied as she traced a foot along the ground. She didn’t sound enthusiastic. I know she was having an identity crisis as far as the Yeerks were concerned, but it was good to see that it hadn’t blindsided her to this mission, to the necessity of it. I felt a wave of relief go through me; whatever Visser Three was up to, he hadn’t had time to change this yet. It’s funny, the Kandrona has almost religious significance to Yeerks, but it also has a sort of similar position for us, as _Animorphs_. This was the site of our first great victory. In the future, there might be a memorial here, school children would yawn through lectures of what we had accomplished today.

“Jake, you ready?” Marco asked.

((Yeh, you can go ahead.))

This was the scary part. Jake was a tiger not to fight the Yeerks, but to defend himself in case we went nuts as Taxxons or tried to devour each other in half morph (which I guess technically also qualifies as going nuts). We had no idea what a Taxxon brain was going to be like.

“We should have practiced this,” I grumbled. Maybe it was oversight. Maybe we had just sorta all subconsciously wanted to delay becoming this monstrosity. I don’t know. No more delay though, I started to morph.

The first thing that happened was I grew, but it wasn’t Taxxon it was just… more Rachel. My butt blew out, there’s no other way to put it. “Baby got blargk,” Marco said, before his face turned to jello and his mouth grew to occupy 90% of it. I felt a tingling along my stomach and looked down, before immediately turning away – tiny bristly Taxxon legs had all burst out of my side. I was swelling now, putting on enormous bulk and surprisingly, cords of muscle that went across the entire height… length? – of my body. I felt an itching as my teeth multiplied and multiplied and multiplied again just for fun. My vision shifted to a different spectrum of colors. It was still to dark to see how much had really changed, but the blue tints of the city lights were dimmer, the reds more vibrant. Not great though, slightly worse than human eyes, but not awful.

And then the Taxxon brain hit me like a sledgehammer. Hunger. But not… not an overwhelming hunger in itself. That is, I didn’t feel any pangs or pains or desire to eat for its own sake. The Taxxon didn’t enjoy eating. I felt, it took me a moment to realize it, and the feeling shocked me to the core. I felt fear. This giant nightmare inducing giant centipede monster was driven by overwhelming terror. Terror it would die of starvation, that there would never be enough nutrients to sustain itself, that it was trapped in a battle of which the only solution was to binge like no one has ever binged before.

((I had no idea,)) Cassie voiced for all of us. Then went on, definitely not on my behalf, ((Oh, these poor things.))

((I’m sorry – what?)) Tobias called from above.

((They’re… well, they’re disgusting,)) I supplied, ((but it’s not mindless. It’s not malicious or anything it’s just like this brain is hardwired to prevent starvation. The fear of starvation is driving everything in here. It’s like being the shrew, it’s just all terror all the time. But it’s smart too. It’s like…)) I searched for the word.

((It’s like the Dolphin,)) Marco supplied, and I realized he was exactly right. ((It’s a demon dolphin granted and where the dolphin is trapped in a completely empty ocean. There’s an intelligence, but instead of everything being a game, everything is a quest to just not die even if that means literally killing everything in order to eat it.))

((It’s not even just that,)) Cassie added. ((Can’t you feel it? It’s not just a fear of dying for itself, but for its… family? No, that’s not the word.))

((Hive.)) I blurted. ((Guys they’re like really big and smart ants. They have a hive and they have to keep feeding it.))

((Guys, guys.)) Jake cut in. ((This is really strange and all but we’ve got to get going. I’ve checked the ceiling entrance again just in case and yeah, it’s reinforced way beyond what even a tiger can do. Are you ready to dig?))

I crouched my giant bloated wiggling body to the ground, tiny but very manipulable legs that ended in very versatile pincers. I noted Jake – predator, I could not eat him. Not alone. With only two of my comrades, it could not be done. Tobias would be better if he would land.

((Yeah,)) I replied shakily. ((But stay back a bit. And Tobias, you definitely stay airborne. Please.))

((I can control it,)) Cassie answered. ((You have to focus on the concrete. We need to eat it. It has trace minerals.))

((Wild.)) Tobias replied, deadpan.

((Seriously, Tobias, not now.)) Marco snapped. ((We need to focus. We need to eat the concrete.)

We squashed together, despite our size our bodies tessellated together like the most disgusting jello combo ever. I bit into the roof. Eat, eat, eat. It was overkill, the Taxxon could eat its way through a mere roof in minutes. It gave me a new appreciation for just how the Yeerk Pool had been built – and thinking back on our earlier reconnaissance, it was totally plausible that the Yeerks could have a tunnel from the Yeerk Pool to that meat place. A team of Taxxons? No trouble.

On the other hand, there was also the horrific knowledge that eating the concrete provided far less nutrition than the act of eating it spent. That as a Taxxon I could – would – literally eat myself to death on dirt if it came to it.

((Ok, we’re through,)) Marco reported barely ten minutes later. Ten feet of reinforced concrete? No trouble. ((And for the record, I really don’t want to think about Pop Tarts right now,))

He slithered up out the pipe we had created. We now had a roughly ten foot long and just as wide ramp leading into the top floor of the EGS tower. Based on memory, the Kanrona itself would be in the room right where it came out, although Marco couldn’t see anything at the angle we had come through.

((I’ll go first,)) Jake said. The three of us had demorphed and we’re now going into Battle Morphs; it was going to be a stretch but in single file we could just fit through a tiger, gorilla, grizzly bear and for all the additional firepower she had picked up, Cassie was going to have to go wolf. A cape buffalo wasn’t part of today’s dance card.

((Guess I’m going Cheetah,)) Tobias replied once the rest of us were no longer Taxxons and he could safely land. ((No way an elephant is getting through there, and I’d rather not try fighting a battle sixty floors up as an alligator.

Jake jumped. I followed, landing with a great crash, another one signaling Marco’s arrival. ((If they didn’t know we were here before, they do now, let’s go!)) Cassie landed, followed by Tobias. I looked around the room – and there it was; a giant silvery box about the size of a car, giving off a slight red light that hummed and gave off two quick pulses every few seconds.

((Marco and Rachel – you’ve got the Kandrona; the rest of us are on the attack. Get it out there as fast as you can.))

We pushed. The Kandrona inched forward. Jake smashed open the door and twisted low, immediately finding a target in a surprised looking Hork Bajir. Cassie and Tobias were through a fraction of a second later, and Tobias was _fast_ , even with Jake’s advantage, Tobias reached his own target at the same time, hissing and biting and clawing with the predator mind that was now a permanent part of him.

((You holding up, Xena?)) Marco grunted as the Kandrona moved another foot.

((Never been better. Good of you to help a lady out,)) I replied, my great bear muscles heaving once again, another push forcing it a few inches closer to the now much larger door space that Jake had made for us. Closer to the windows where it would fall sixty stories and with it all hopes of a quick Yeerk redo for Visser Three.))

As soon as we got out the door though, the hopes that those last thirty feet were going to be any easier tied painfully.

Literally. Jake, Cassie, and Tobias were in the middle of a bloodbath, and not all of it was Hork Bajir. ((Why didn’t you tell us it was this bad!)) Marco cried out in shock as we both broke off to take on the Controllers.

((We need to get the Kandrona out of here.)) Jake spoke to us, while letting out a roar and pouncing in between two Hork Bajir, take a glancing slice to the shoulder in the process but avoiding on stab that would have been much more immediately dangerous. I slammed a giant bear paw into my opponent’s face. Even a Hork Bajir couldn’t come up from that right away. I bashed him in again just to be sure. Marco was clubbing another with its own detached arm. A Hork Bajir that had been moving on Tobias instead came after me, and I grappled with it, a life and death struggle as the battle roared around me.

((We can’t get the Kandrona out if we die in the process,)) Marco yelled back at last, the amputated Horkbajir collapsing on the ground, whether from Marco’s bludgeoning or the massive lost of blood who knows. Marco chucked the arm at another that was coming at him. Cassie let out a howl, but it was laced with pain. I tried to move towards her, but another Hork Bajir blocked my path, deadly blades slicing into my thick fur and leaving deep gashes across my chest. I picked him up and threw him across the room, though I could feel a new slash on my face and blood dripped into my left eye.

My rear flank was secure, even as more Hork Bajir drove a wedge between myself and Cassie. Something though was very wrong about all of this. What?

I looked around, my bear eyes weak at the best of times but that was it, no Yeerks were anywhere near the Kandrona.

((We have to get out of here,)) I screamed out, horror dawning on me. ((The Kandrona is a fake. The Yeerks don’t give a damn if we destroy it. They aren’t even trying to protect it.))

((That doesn’t prove anything,)) Tobias replied, sounding at the end of his rope. ((They kill us, they save the Kandrona.))

((Not a single Controller came after me or Rachel until we jumped in ourselves,)) Marco added, grim and methodical even as smashed a Hork Bajir head into a pulp.

((I’m losing it guys,)) Cassie’s voice entered my head. ((What’s the plan?))

((Everyone to Cassie,)) Jake’s voice cut in an instant later. ((And then to the elevator.))

With one last ounce of strength we pushed forward. Cassie was a mess, at least one leg lame from blood loss. I picked her up and she let out a roar. It would have been scary, but to the grizzly, a wounded wolf was like a baby. We fell back on the big elevator bay, Jake and Marco covering our retreat. I slammed a paw on the ‘down’ button.

The surviving Hork Bajir were regrouping, blocking any chance of us charging forward once more, but not willing to jump forward and be the hero to kill us, the elevator opened, we backed into it. Marco jammed the “door close” button with one thick finger as the Hork Bajir surged. He pointed up with his other hand, three fingers on which were broken. ((Everyone out _now!)_ ) I looked up, there was one of those elevator service doors in the roof. It was locked.

 _Wham_. I punched up, one arm still cradling Cassie. The door was no longer locked. ((This is gonna hurt, sorry,)) I said to Cassie before throwing her up through the roof. She let out a whimper as she landed but didn’t comment further. Tobias pounced up and through the hole a second later. ((Demorphing, he called back. Cassie too. Then flies.))

Nothing happened at the door. No Hork Bajir blades slammed through the wall. Jake began to demorph, just enough to lose most of his Tiger’s bulk, and then Marco picked him up and Jake scrambled out the hole.

((Just us Xena. Eanie, Meanie, Miney, Moe?))

((I’ll pick you up and you get out, and then you pull me through.)) I grunted even as a Grizzly, as Marco in full Silverback Gorilla morph put one giant foot on my back. I looked at the elevator door, still unharmed. ((And if it anything happens, make sure I get out… one way or another.))

Marco is in many ways the _Animorph_ most like me, which is probably why we fight the most. I might be the most… willing of the _Animorphs_ , when it comes to going all out into a dangerous situation, but Marco is the most ruthless when it comes to cold calculated necessity. I respected that, even though I’d never tell him that to his face.

((I got it,)) was all he said as he scrambled up, ((now come on!))

Like Jake, I had to demorph inside the elevator, at least a bit. Granted there’s no way to know exactly how a morph will go, but when you’ve got amost seven hundred pounds of bear to lose, at least some of it is going to shed early on in the demorphing process.

I pressed the button for lobby, which with my half human bear paw resulted in about five floors lighting up. Close enough. I reached up and a gorilla arm grabbed me. I was probably still around four hundred pounds at that point, but through the roof I went, my legs scrabbling behind me as soon as I had purchase. The elevator groaned and began to descend. Cassie was a human sized fly at this point, and Tobias was covered in bristles. Jake had just finished demorphing, and Marco was more recognizably human than gorilla. I continued to become myself, the adrenaline rush beginning to come to a head.

((Up or down,)) Cassie asked as her thoughtspeak kicked in.

((Up. All the way up there will be ventilation duct lead-)) Marco’s thoughtspeak cut off. “Duct leading outside, on the side of the building just below the roof under the awning.” He finished. I relayed the instructions to Cassie before I lost thought speak myself. I was human again. I pushed myself harder. How many floors had we gone down now. Twenty? Thirty? I had to be a fly before the elevator stopped. Why hadn’t the Yeerks just stopped it?

No time, needed to become the fly. Antennae popped out of my head.

((I’m up,)) Tobias’s voice called out distantly but I couldn’t let it distract me. Wings, a foot long rippled out of my skin. My vision broken into compound eyes. My skin turned hard and black and my chest schlooped in as my ribcage disappeared.

I could hear voices now, below and muffled. The elevator was slowing down.

((Up,)) Jake.

((Race you)) Marco. To Jake? No, he was about the size of a toddler, still had no wings and his tongue was a half formed proboscis flopping out of his mouth.

((I never lose,)) I exclaimed, willing the morph on faster. The elevator stopped.

Ping.

The doors opened, a swarm of human Controllers entered the elevator. I half rolled half hobbled away from the entrance, not that he would have any idea I was actually human at this stage.

Someone fired. Three shots burst through the roof of the elevator, missing me by a foot. ((Shit!)) Marco exclaimed. ((Let’s go!))

We both took off at almost the same time. Making the now Everest-sized climb to safety.

((Everyone ok?)) Cassie’s voice came through. ((I’m not at the top yet I don’t think but there’s a breeze here – I think there must be outlets along the side of the building too. I’m going to check…))

((Yep, I’m outside,)) her voice came back a minute later, slightly muffled. ((Whoa this is high. And this wind is fast yikes,)) she was babbling.

((I’m out too,)) Tovias called out. ((Um… woah its weird seeing things up this high but as a fly. Or not seeing them I guess, these eyes are awful.))

((Just get out as far as you can,)) Jake called out. ((Get out, then demorph when you can and go bird. If we end up out of thoughtspeak range of each other, we’re meeting in Cassie’s barn at noon.))

It wasn’t as bad as all that. It was dawn now, and the Saturday morning slow awakening was torn apart by a wail of sirens as police came converged on the EGS tower. Later that night we would hear that the building was to be closed until further notice, something about discovery of damage from a prior earthquake that had previously gone unnoticed.

But that was later, for now I just surfed on the cross wind for a bit letting it take me away from the tower fast than I could fly myself. Then, I corkscrewed down to the ground, finding a nice, tasty (i.e., totally disgusting) dumpster behind a Burger King, already starting to pile up with the early morning’s breakfast waste. I was crashing now, and willed myself into one final morph – The Raven, nothing more – before swooping back home.

Everyone was still asleep when I got back home. Even my mom who’s an early bird wasn’t up yet. And here I was with a near death experience after eating who knows maybe a ton of concrete. I was too tired to be sick. I flew in, demorphed, set my alarm for eleven, and crashed before I hit the pillows.

“We’re so screwed,” Marco said for the third time as he paced behind Cassie’s barn. “Completely and utterly screwed. Visser Three is definitely a time traveller, and he’s definitely covering his tracks and fixing his mistakes. He didn’t even show up to gloat before we made our escape.”

“At least we’re alive,” Cassie interjected. Marco sent her a withering look.

“Only by luck,” he countered. “That, or most of the real security is wherever the real Kandrona has been moved to. So Visser Three’s ambush didn’t go quite as he planned, maybe he was rushed. But it’s still a loss for us in the end. Not just a loss this is game breakingly bad.”

“Marco, chill out,” Jake snapped. Then he took a deep breath. “We’re all tense. But yeah, we’re alive, which means it’s not game over yet. Cassie’s right, even if the situation sucks. So let’s go through. Now, are you _sure_ it was a fake Kandonra.”

Marco and I shared a look. “Yeah,” I said at last. “For one, we were right about the Controllers, they didn’t care at all what Marco and I were doing it’s like they wanted us focused on the Kandrona over helping you guys. And for another,” I paused to collect my thoughts, gesturing vaguely with my hands. “The last time I pushed the Kandrona more or less by myself, after a battle. This time it took me and Marco, and both of us were fresh. Now that I have time to reflect, it was heavier.”

“They wanted to maximize how much time it took to push it,” Tobias concluded with a nod.

I agreed.

“And even if it was real – which it _wasn’t_ –” Marco gave me a nod, “There was no way we were moving it to the windows without all of us being killed. That thing was heavy. No way Rachel could have moved it the first time on her own.”

Jake accepted that with a grim nod. “Ok.”

“There’s something else that bothers me,” Cassie again. “Where _is_ Visser Three?”

Marco actually had an answer for that. “Don’t quote me on this,” he looked around at everyone, “but I’ve been wargaming that out. What would I do if I were Visser Three, based on what we know about him. And if I had to bet, he’s coming after us… but he’s also got a few beefs among the Yeerks he wants to sort out as well. And after us, I think the person he wants to make life miserable for the most isn’t the Andalites at all. It’s Visser One.”

Nobody said anything, but yeah, Visser One. Visser Three’s rival. A hatred so deep that in the past, Visser One had actually helped us to embarrass Visser Three. And Visser One who also happened to have Marco’s mom as a Controller.

“You know,” I cried out, frustrated bubbling over. “This would be a really good time for any sort of supernatural omnipotent power who can pause time to show up and explain what’s really going on!”

Nothing happened.

We talked for a bit more but nobody’s heart was in it to really get down to anything concrete, not after today’s catastrophe. Not when there was a whole other dimension now that our main enemy was also making changes. Not even an hour later we were heading out. Or at least three of us were, Jake had nobly volunteered to help Cassie muck the horses, but by the way they kept looking at each other I doubted that was all they had in mind.

Marco, Tobias, and I took flight. An Osprey, a Hawk, and an Eagle. I think we all needed the pick me up of being a raptor just then. I expected Marco to head home, I had planned to ask Tobias if he wanted to float on the thermals for a bit and brainstorm even if the mood wasn’t as celebratory as originally planned. So it was a bit of a shock when it was Marco who turned northward towards the abandoned belfry that we sometimes used as a morphing base.

((We need a gameplan,)) he said as we followed. ((We need a way to hurt Visser Three, we need a way to know what he’s up to, and I don’t care what we have to do to get it but we need it before my mom is on that Blade Ship.))

Oh, damn. Well when he put it that way…

((Let’s do it!))

* * *

**Chapter 3**

* * *

It was dumb keeping Jake and Cassie out of it, and in my defense we only went there to come up with a _plan_. But we were reeling from mission failure and Marco’s reminder that his mom would be showing up any day now sort of put a deadline on things – we definitely needed to know what had changed on the Yeerk side of things by the time the two head honchos of the Earth invasion met up again, especially since they hated each other and had completely different ideas of how things should go. We didn’t exactly want to be accidentally responsible for upping Visser Three’s street cred.

We had flown to the belfry and then demorphed, hashing it out at each other while barefoot on the dirt floor. Yes, flying is more fun, but when ideas are flying thick and fast and without our Ax to keep track of morph time, it was better to say these things where we weren’t in any danger of overrunning our morphs for no reason. And I especially didn’t want to give Tobias a reason to push his clock.

“This is going to be insanely dangerous,” Marco sighed, giving the ground a kick as he did so – then winced. He was barefoot afterall. I snickered and he gave me a dirty look. “I mean even if we pull this off, we have to keep pulling it off _every day_.”

I nodded. “Yes, but hello, _we can morph_. Someone flies to Chapman’s house at lunch. Go through the back door _as Chapman_. Go down to the Yeerk room, take the tape and replace with a fresh one, and then rinse and repeat. Nobody is going to be suspicious of Chapman going into his own house-”

“Actually, Rachel” Marco interrupted me, obviously fighting to keep his voice low. “Yeah, lots of people might wonder exactly why Chapman is home when he’s supposed to be in school, even if we land in the back. It only takes a single neighbor making a comment and then Chapman’s Yeerk is all, ‘hey, maybe the Andalite bandits are sneaking into my house,” and the first we’ll know of this is when one of us gets caught in a trap with no backup.

“So two of us go,” Tobias suggested. “One as bird for transport and a bug passenger. Bug goes in the house, morphs Chapman on the inside. Goes back to bug and flown back to school. Nobody sees a thing.”

Marco frowned. “That’s really morph intensive for the bug morpher,” he said, slowly. I held my tongue – Marco complains a lot but he’s got a point when he’s parsing through a plan. I’d interject if he just went negative for it’s own sake, but it was best to let him think his way through it. “Bug, demorph, Chapman, demorph, bug, then demorph again… and that’s assuming everything goes according to plan. All within an hour.”

“An hour we wouldn’t be morphing again until hours later,” I pointed out. “From noon till what, evening at least. And if we have something really important going on, we can skip a day.”

Marco nodded at that. “What’s the time frame for this?” He looked at Tobias.

“We can fly from school to the house fifteen minutes easy, usually it’s about twelve. Three morphs for the bug are going to take time, but we can probably do the house in what… twenty?”

We all exchanged a look. That really was going to be taxing for whoever was the bug of the day.

“It’s doable,” I said at last. “And we can change up depending on the circumstances. Sometimes we might not need the bug, but it’s an option. We _can_ do this.”

“Yeah,” Marco said after a moment. “It’s going to be dangerous and really tiring, but we _can_.”

“I’ll scout out Mrs. Chapman’s schedule, see if she has regular hours at the hospital,” Tobias added. Seeing our obvious confusion at the nonsequitor, he went on with a shrug, “Chapman doesn’t leave school till after four, usually. I don’t know if he is dealing with Yeerk or Assistant Principle stuff, but whenever I watched him before I never saw him leave the school before four, and usually around four-thirty. If Mrs. Chapman isn’t home either, then that’s a safer window than trying to sneak out of school.”

Tobias looked thoughtful for a minute. “You know, scratch all of this. If I’m dropping out of school, I can just do this every day anyway. First thing in the morning as soon as everyone clears out.”

I wanted to protest, I didn’t like how cavalier Tobias was being with this.

“Okay” Marco clapped his hands together. “So we have a plan.” He looked at me then Tobias. “Lots of plans, we can mix and match as we need but it’s all here… well – minus the fact that we all need to acquire the Chapmans, and we need some electronics that are way out of any of our price range. But other than that, we’re good to go!”

“I’ll go by the Chapman’s tonight,” I said. “I need to see Melissa anyway. I haven’t been a really good friend lately and well, she’s falling apart right now,” I trailed off, thinking about the last time around, when I had comforted Melissa when morphed as her pet cat. I had sent her a note a little later telling her that her father still loved her – which I know was a really dumb thing to do, even with all the good intentions. Still, if I could make an impact as Rachel the human friend, even if she was distant, it was worth a shot.

“-shame we can’t acquire morphs from one another,” Tobias was saying. “Would make things a lot simpler.”

Silence.

“Wait, what?” Marco asked, shaking his head.

“We talked about it,” I replied stunned. “I remember talking about it way back when. But did we ever actually try it?”

More silence.

“Well, only one way to find out,” I said, and without another wasted second I started morphing into my Elephant morph. Marco and Tobias stepped back as I grew, and grew, and grew. Ok so I was a little selfish and wanted to keep the Grizzly for myself.

“I already have it,” Tobias shrugged. “It won’t prove anything if I can suddenly turn into an elephant.”

((Oh, right.)) I felt a little foolish. ((But hey this is just a test. Marco, you wanna try?))

“Um, sure,” he sounded a little nervous. “If I blow up or turn into a giant freakazoid though tell Jake this was all your idea.”

Marco put a hand on my front leg and I waited for him to acquire me. I blinked. Then he was stepping back and I shook my head, feeling that return to reality when you realize a boring person has stopped talking. Huh, so that’s what being acquired feels like, it really is a sort of space out.

“Rachel you might need to demorph first, I don’t think this space is really built for two elephants.”

I did. My giant front legs shriveled underneath me and I tipped over even as the rest of me shrunk as well. There was a disconcerting sloshing sound as my tail sucked up into my spine, and my giant elephant ears became totally human before they started shrinking at all.

And five minutes later, I was standing there my human self again, next to Marco the elephant.

((This is big!)) Marco said with a wave of the trunk.

“Yes, it’s called an elephant,” I said slowly. Tobias coughed.

((No – well that too. I mean, think how many morphs we can get now without running suspicions about us as a group. Cassie can go to the Gardens with her mom and clean up!))

Marco demorphed, and he was glowing – I guess he needed a win as much as any of us did, and he was grabbing this development with both hands.

“I better get back home,” he said as we all got ready to go back to bird morph. “I’ll drop by Jake’s and explain what we’ve talked about – I don’t like hiding this any longer than we had to.”

“Guess I’m picking up Chapman morphs then,” I said. “And I’ll pick up Fluffer again. I’m going to need to go in once that way anyway-” I held up a hand, forestalling the obvious objections. “Not to go into that room, I swear. Visser Three would have me killed on the spot if he saw me this time round. But I need to see exactly how Chapman accessed the secret room. That’s all, I swear.” _And comfort my friend_ , but I kept that part to myself.

We flew off back towards town.

((You’re going in tonight, aren’t you?)) Tobias asked me in private thoughtspeak once we were airborne.

((Yeah,)) I tried to keep my tone light. ((Why?))

((Sooner the better, right? I’ll be on the roof then if you need backup. Chapman went down to the room around seven, last time round.))

I thought back to the last time I had done this mission. ((Yeah, that sounds right.))

We flew in silence for a bit after that, just enjoying the wind and as we hit back over town, the thermals rising from the streets.

((I think I have a solution to how we can get the recording stuff,)) Tobias broke in a while later.

((I assumed we were going to steal it,)) I admitted. ((Commandeering is the word, right? I mean it’s for a war after all, even if we aren’t exactly the Marines.))

((Sure, but I’ve got a way we can buy what we need.)) He paused. ((Sorta.))

((You have the cash?)) I fought and failed to keep the surprise out of my voice. ((Sorry, I didn’t mean-))

((No, you’re fine. I uh, don’t. But a… friend of my uncle’s does.))

((What’s that got – oh no way, Tobias!)) To be honest, I wasn’t even totally against the idea – I could imagine the sort of people Tobias’ uncle considered to be friends. But this wasn’t what I had expected from Tobias.

((Trust me Rach – it’s not exactly like it’s rightfully his money anyway. And that’s way better and less risky than trying to rip off Best Buy or whatever.))

((Yeah, sorry I was just surprised.)) I thought about it. This wasn’t the first time I had to make a decision, but the reality was that without destroying the Kandrona, we were losing this time round. We needed to know what Visser Three was up to if we were going to catch up, let alone pull ahead. ((Ok yeah, what do we need to do?”))

((Just be ready to fly later tonight.))

((Sure, just give me till eight then it’s a date.))

I got back home and had a quick bite to eat then went in my room for a bit. My sisters were with my mom so it was oddly quiet, and I needed the time just to come to grips with how wild everything was. There was a picture on my desk of me, Melissa and Jake, taken after some gymnastics meet that my aunt had come to watch and somehow Jake had gotten dragged along. It was maybe a year old, although with my own timetravel memories it felt more like three.

Melissa and I were both smiling in a way I don’t think either of us had for a long time. I tried to think back but I couldn’t remember the details. Melissa probably won her events, she was – is – really good. I probably did ok. But it didn’t matter, we were just smiling and having fun, you know? Jake’s smile looked forced, his aunt had probably told him to smile for the picture. But even so, his eyes were relaxed. I hadn’t seen Jake relaxed in a long time.

Now, Jake and Melissa lived with Yeerks inside their own homes.

I shook myself. It doesn’t do to dwell on the things you can’t control. I had a mission, and it was time to get going. We’d had a setback, now it was time to get back on the high beam.

Which is how I spent the rest of my day hanging out with Melissa who had no idea her parents were victims of an alien invasion so that I could brush contact and acquire both of their DNA, as well as the DNA of her pet cat so I could first spy on her dad and to get the key to a secret base (which was really easy by the way, it was just a hidden panel that he had to touch, I forgot just how much of Yeerk security at this point discounted the idea that we could morph) and then comfort Melissa but this time once more as a pretend cat.

It’s weird how different Controllers can be, once you know what to look for. In public, they’re really hard to spot. But in private, some of them have an uncanny valley feel to them. Tom’s Yeerk had detached itself from the rest of Jake’s family, but he still was Tom, he just had his priorities readjusted. The Chapman’s though were distancing themselves form their daughter, and it led to a much more creepy vibe in the place. Even there normal when they let me into the house, mentioned how long it had been since I’d been over properly, called Melissa down… there was a sense of reading off a script.

“Oh Rachel, look at you,” Mrs. Chapman cooed, reaching over to give me a hug. I touched her arm and acquired her – one down, I thought. She sagged slightly into me and then her head shot up slightly, “Oh it’s so nice to see you. The hours at the hospital, I haven’t been to one of your meets for some time.”

I smiled and said I looked forward to seeing her. Then Mr. Chapman showed up and I offered my hand and without even thinking about it there it was I had acquired my friend’s parents by the time Melissa was down the stairs.  
  


“Hey mom, dad,” her face visibly brightened at seeing her parents I guess acting like normal people. Then she froze when she saw me. “Oh, hi Rachel?” He tone was cold but polite, like something was my fault but she was trying to hide it. Maybe it was – how would it feel if a friend made your parents act more themselves than you could?

“Hey Mel,” I said, giving her a small wave. “Just wanted to see if you had time to hang for a bit?”

She looked trapped for a split second, eyes bouncing from her parents to me. Then she shrugged. “Sure, I guess… she looked up at her parents.”

Mrs. Chapman smiled. “That sounds like a good idea. Why don’t you girls go up to Melissa’s room and I’ll let you know when dinner’s ready. Rachel? Would you like to stay?”

I looked at Melissa, trying to judge the situation. If I stayed, would the Yeerks give Melissa a real family dinner? And would she appreciate it or resent me for it? “I actually only have about an hour,” I replied apologetically. “My mom’s home and you know.”

Mr. Chapman nodded – the Yeerk in his head would know about my parents’ divorce, and my mom’s busy schedule. “Of course – well you young ladies have fun for an hour then.”

Melissa actually warmed up once we were upstairs. She went along as before for a bit, and then I guess something just broke and she just needed the companionship. I promised myself and her – even if I couldn’t tell her the promise – that I wasn’t going to forget her this time around. She was my friend. I stroked Fluffer’s tail, and when Melissa was recounting a story from last summer I acquired my final objective.

Sorry – I know this isn’t very detailed, but I’m not comfortable sharing our conversation, writing it down. It wasn’t anything big or revealing or important but it was intimate in a way no time we’d ever spent before had been; me knowing the truth of her parents being trapped in prison’s in their own heads and the sacrifice her father had made to protect her. It mattered, me going there as me. That’s all I really want to say about that.

I left about an hour later and after my goodbyes (and after Tobias confirming the real Fluffer was now out on his nighttime prowl), I doubled back to the Chapmans, only this time as a cat. I got in just in time to see them sitting down for dinner, and whatever appearances they had shown when I had arrived were clearly over now. Melissa kept trying to engage them on everything from her gym meets to homework, and was met each time by trite responses and throwaway replies. At six-fifty according to the microwave clock Mr. Chapman mentioned he had work to take care of.

I slunk the shadows behind the couch, then padded silently behind him as he opened the door to the basement. As I said earlier it wasn’t a big deal how he opened the secret room – he just revealed a secret thumbpad, pressed it and in he went. I was tempted to follow. Oh how I wanted to know what was going on! But if Visser Three saw me he really would kill me, and this time around he might not spare Melissa either. So I waited in the dark.

((How’d it go?)) Tobias asked when I finally leaped out the window and made my way across to a neighbor’s house we had already scoped out as a safe demorphing spot.

((Ok. I got the morphs. I got the entrance code. I… I really hate the Yeerks.))

Tobias fluttered up over me, driving the cat’s brain wild – large birds of prey were one of the only things that made the cat brain sit up and take notice as danger.

((Still thinking about Cassie?))

That was a loaded question, and maybe part of why I had been leaving Cassie out of the plan, beyond the usual ‘she won’t like this’ side of things – that hadn’t really been an excuse to freeze someone on the outside before, especially not my best friend. But one of the last things that had happened before we came back was Cassie had befriended a Yeerk, and even become a Controller and then… it doesn’t really matter I guess because it hasn’t technically even happened yet and maybe never will, but-

((Rachel, you there?))

((Huh. Sorry… yeah, maybe a little bit. And maybe she has a point about specific Yeerks, but the amount of evil they are doing, even to just the Chapmans. Or Jake’s family, if they knew. How many others? Thousands by now, it has to be. Maybe even millions.)) That was a dangerous thought even for itself.

((All the more reason to do… you know.))

I was in the shadows of the deck behind the neighbor’s house. I demorphed, and then began the transition to owl. Tobias stayed as a hawk, despite the hour.

((Yeah, let’s do it. Where to?))

We flew to the west of town, past the parts where I was used to – even past where Tobias and his uncle lived, which weren’t exactly the nicest areas. We came to land the roof of a four story concrete block.

((I don’t like the déjà vu,)) I said as we landed. ((We’re digging in from the top again, aren’t we?))

((Yeh, but it’s not Yeerk security, I figure we just go straight in and smash and grab,)) and I definitely noted a little bit of glee in Tobias’ thoughtspeak at the idea.

I didn’t ask. ((You sure we’re over the right apartment though?))

((Yeh, for sure.))

We demorphed. And while the roof might have been concrete and even somewhat insulated, the windows along the side weren’t.

“Tobias, there’s a dog in there. It sounds like a big one.”

He sounded sheepish, which wasn’t something I was used to from Tobias anymore. “I forgot about that. Call if off then?”

“Nah. But we might want more firepower. You dig, I’ll go first in the hole.”

“I don’t have a Taxxon morph.”

Yeah yeah, you’re probably thinking I could have morphed Taxxon and then Tobias could have acquired it and then he could have morphed Taxxon but c’mon that’s a lot of extra steps just to break into some lowlife criminal’s place.

And jumping down onto the ridiculously tiny ‘patio’ and crushing a worn out deck chair and then smashing the glass was easier and a lot more satisfying.

The guy’s dog took one look at the giant grizzly bear that had just crashed the party and decided that he wanted no part of this fight. Tobias swung down a second later in spider monkey getup, letting out a chitter of noise and looking around the room – and still making sure to keep me between him and the big dog.

((Well, yeah, that works too.)) He said looking around. ((Ok, all I ever saw was a duffle bag sort thing. But I assume he has something more durable and permanent here?))

((I don’t know, I’m not a drug dealer!))

((… Yeah, ok good point.. Let’s just look around. Quickly.))

Bears don’t have great vision, but it wasn’t exactly that big of a place and I wasn’t trying to hide what I was up to. There was a cage thing over the front door – I guess he wasn’t expecting visitors to come down from the roof. Within a minute all the furniture was overturned and a closet door was a lot less attached than it was before.

((I think I found something!)) Tobias called out, rooting through the contents of the closet as I went to examine the walk in kitchen which for all my stereotypes of drug dealers was actually pretty clean, even if the food available didn’t exactly scream high cuisine or healthy eating.

Tobias came loping up to me dragging a long black denim bag just as I was smashing open the oven.

((That’s it?))

Tobias tipped the bag open. A bunch of shall we say stuff tumbled out, along with a pack of bills held together with a rubber band, about an inch thick.

((Alright, mission accomplished.)) I cheered, but Tobias was thumbing the stack and muttering little monkey noises.

((It’s mostly smaller bills. There’s maybe… I dunno, five hundred dollars here? Maybe a thousand or two?))

((That’s two thousand more than we had five minutes ago,)) I pointed out. ((Do you know how drug dealers work?))

((I know that my uncle doesn’t come back with change,)) he snapped back. ((There’s got to be more somewhere.))

I lumbered out the kitchen area. There was only the bathroom and bedroom left, and the bedroom had a scared dog in it that I didn’t particularly want to hurt.

((We need to hurry,)) I said instead. ((There’s got to be police coming.))

((Maybe, but maybe people that live here aren’t exactly the first to call 9-1-1.))

I shrugged my massive bear shoulders, heading for the bathroom first. And then out of nowhere, the dog stopped whining and howled. Huh.

The next thing I noticed was the door opening, and some big wild-eyed guy with straggly black hair staring at me in astonishment. I turned around and charged at him, but there was still the cage between him and me. Not a big deal, it wouldn’t take much for me to get through them and knock him out.

But I hadn’t counted on the gun.

((Rachel, I think we need to go,)) Tobias said, backing up.

((Yeah.)) I let out roar of defiance and started to turn away, and he shot me.

In the arm, but still.

((He shot me! I’m going to-))

((Rachel, let’s _go_! Get a hold of the bear and let’s get out of here.))

((I thought you said there was more money here?!))

((Yeh, before my uncle’s dealer showed up armed!))

He shot me again in the butt as we were heading back for the window, which really just how dumb do you have to be to shoot a grizzly bear that’s leaving? I made sure to smash the tv just for good measure as I followed Tobias back out. The patio was still a ways up to the roof but even with two bullets, psh – please. Upright I was pretty much able to paw the roof anyway.

I scrambled up and we demorphed, two bullets clanking against the cement as I did so. No, the problem as we flew away – both as owl’s this time – a bundle of bills clutched in Tobias’ talons was just how sad a success it was. We’d always drawn a line and we’d broken it tonight, bigtime, and for a few hundred dollars. I’m not saying that stealing is okay if the payoff is good enough, or even that the drug dealer didn’t deserve to have a chunk of his cash taken, it just… I don’t know, felt like we had put something big on the line for a dud. I didn’t like it.

((It’ll cover the cost for the Chapman mission,)) Tobias said and he was right, but it sounded a lot like he was trying to convince me. Or himself.

((How do you think it went for Marco?)) I asked instead. ((You think Jake’s mad?))

((Honestly? No. Not about the Chapman stuff. I mean he’s going to be mad at us for tonight, yeah. Marco will be too.))

((Cassie too,)) I finished.

((So we care about Cassie’s opinion again?)) He broached the topic we had danced around before.

I let out a sigh – or would have if the owl had been capable of it. ((Yeah, I do.))

((Tobias?)) I asked after we had flown back over into the good part of town. ((Where are you planning on going if you – when you – go off the grid again.))

((I’m not sure yet,)) he said after a moment. ((I thought about going to the Hork Bajir Valley and setting up a campsite there. But it’s a bit out of the way for day-to-day stuff. I was thinking of contacting Erek.

That brought me up short. Erek King was a kid who went to our school, except he wasn’t actually a kid at all, but a member of a pacifist race of ancient robots. It’s complicated. They had been allies the last time around but their pacifist programming – and their refusal to change it even when they could – had made a wedge between us over time. Allies of convenience, but not exactly friends. But on the other hand, the King’s had a normal house with all the human comforts not to mention a secret underground headquarters where they kept their dogs (long story).

((That’s a pretty good idea,)) I said at last. ((We need to contact the Chee again anyway, I guess.))

((I thought I’d do it tomorrow,)) Tobias supplied after a moment. ((Then go ahead and disappear this week – it might catch unwanted attention if I disappear right after whatever the Yeerks have planned at The Gardens.))

((This is so messed up,)) I concluded. Tobias laughed, but it was harsh.

((Yeh, I’m starting to get the idea that we eff’d up,)) he said, and I knew he wasn’t talking about our most recent mission.

* * *

**Chapter 4**

* * *

I didn’t want to see everyone on Sunday. Part of it was I had my normal life to at least keep the pretense of. Homework still wasn’t done, and honestly I just wanted to spend time with my sisters and mom instead of reflecting on the lines I’d crossed yesterday. On top of that, we try not to give people to much of a reason to wonder why our little group has formed in case any Controllers get suspicious. Oh sure, me and Cassie were always friends and Jake’s my cousin so yeah, we used to hang out a lot. But we weren’t some tiny clique before we became _Animorphs_.

But the other option was having to deal with everyone at school tomorrow with all these lines still between us. I thought about contacting Tobias and seeing if we could hit up the mall now, maybe go ahead and buy whatever we needed so we could at least have something he to show for it, but in the end I guess I didn’t want to go behind their backs on this one anymore than I had to. Even if we had the cash, this mission was going to require everyone’s participation at some point morphing Mr. Chapman. It wasn’t the sort of thing I could just spring on Jake and Cassie… no more than we already had anyway.

So instead I crammed for school until around noon, then I called Jake. He didn’t sound thrilled – I guess Marco had already clued him in on our first step – but he agreed to hang out at the mall in a few hours. Enough time for me to fly out and find Tobias and run through what we needed to tell the others.

We kept it casual at the mall. It was a balance – the best place for meetings was Cassie’s barn, hands down. But there’s always the possibility that Tom’s Yeerk (or, much as I hated to even think about it, someone else’s) might start to wonder why me, Jake, Marco, and Tobias kept hanging out at Cassie’s. Better to meet up ‘randomly’ at a place nobody could trace us to specifically.

Of course, we didn’t stay there long. Tobias and I got there early and he tolerated me window shopping, but as soon as we ‘accidentally’ bumped into Jake and Marco and then Cassie, we left for a more secure area; in this case, the picnic tables at the park a few blocks away. Jake and Marco made small talk about basketball.

“So, Marco filled me in yesterday,” Jake said at last as we sat down at a shady table well away from anyone else. Behind us was the duckpond, and except for the one large oak overhanging our particular table, it was otherwise open space all around. There was no way for anyone to sneak up on us.

“It’s not a bad plan, in theory,” he followed up, and my expression must have betrayed my shock. “It’s not,” he repeated, “but I don’t like the fact we didn’t discuss this. It’s not how we work.”

“I know, I’m- it’s no excuse, but I didn’t want to bring up something like this half formed. And after,” I waved a hand up, banishing the thought. “You know, we need to get ahead of this, before we end up in the same position as before, or even worse.”

Jake looked tired. He pushed a hand through his hair and let out a breath. “I know, but that’s why we need to all be on the same page. Are we really going to do this? Morphing human?”

“I’m not,” Cassie interjected. Her voice was soft but hard and unshakable like stone. She was staring at her hands, broken fingernails picking at a splinter in the table. “I’m sorry but no, I’m not doing this.” She looked up, her voice wavering ever so slightly as she continued.

“I’ll fly transport if needed. I’m not… I’m not backing out of the team or anything. But I’m not morphing human if I don’t have to.”

I felt a flash of anger. “You morphed me,” I bit out, a little harsher than I intended.

“I had your permission,” she replied.

I bit my lip – she hadn’t. Given that I’d been suffering from the weird morphing allergy I’m not saying she was wrong to morph me, but she hadn’t asked. I wanted to call her out on that. I wanted to call her out on a lot of things to be honest. That she wasn’t taking the war seriously, with the rules that handicapped us for no reason, for risking everything by becoming a Controller, and then to allow herself to be trapped as a caterpillar. Letting Ax become a controller, and putting too much faith in the Yeerk ‘Peace Movement’… which technically, didn’t even exist yet. Didn’t she see that one Yeerk lost to the Yeerks didn’t make any difference at all, but losing one _Animorph_ could be the difference in the survival of our planet?

But I also wanted to – mostly – mend my relationship with my best friend. And a friend who had saved my life more than once. A friend who sometimes I wondered was maybe holding me back from my own worst impulse, like last night. There’s a reason that it was Tobias and Marco I had turned to when I knew I was thinking of crossing a line and didn’t want to be stopped.

“Ok. That’s fine. But I’ll do it,” I said instead. Cassie gave me a small flickering smile and I gave her a tiny nod in return.

“So the first thing we need to do is acquire Mr. Chapman,” Jake continued after our interlude. I raised an eyebrow at Marco, who shrugged. “We didn’t get around to it,” he replied.

Jake exchanged a look with Cassie, both looking confused. I couldn’t fight the grin that spread over my face – this was a really cool gamechanger. “We can acquire morphs from each other,” I hissed, leaning over the table in my excitement. “Marco acquired my elephant morph from _my_ morph. As long as one of us acquires something we’re basically walking zoos.”

Silence for a minute. “Huh,” Jake said with grace and intellect.

“Walking zoo doesn’t sound cool,” Marco grumbled. “Couldn’t you say ‘walking arsenal’ or something? We’re walking deadly weapons.

“Uh huh. Sure you are,” I patted his arm gently. Tobias snickered and I gave him a wink.

“We really should ask Ax more about the details of morphing,” Cassie drew us back to the mission, one finger tapping her chin. I know this is not really relevant, but this time round I was definitely getting Cassie into a proper skincare regimen – _Animorphs_ is no excuse for chewed fingernails.

Cassie continued on, unaware of my thoughts. I shook my head and focused. “-I guess once we met him morphing was just something we already knew, but how did he combine all of us into one morph? What other tricks are there to morphing that we’re missing out on. We need to know.”

“Speaking of Ax, we need to start coming up with a plan for rescuing him.” Tobias continued, “It’s been over a week now, whatever is going on with Ax it’s looking like he’s going to need our help.”

Marco grimaced. “About that. Last night I went online and looked up shipping maps – turns out you can track every boat in the ocean, from old guys hanging out on private yachts to huge cargo ships.”

“Ok, what’s that got to do with Ax?” I asked.

Marco gave me a _look_ , clearly annoyed at my interruption. “Well Rachel, last time when we went to find Ax after that wreckage drifted ashore, a research vessel and a treasure ship started cruising around where Ax was shipwrecked.”

I cursed. Tobias looked grim.

“I’m thinking the reason that Visser Three wasn’t at the Yeerk Pool when we crashed it was there’s now _three_ ships that are cruising around that part of the ocean, and have been for a week.”

I felt sick. We had assumed that we had time to worry about Ax, that he would know to find us or at the worst case we could rescue him around the same time we did last time. But if Visser Three had considered getting Ax as priority one – or whoever he assumed was on the Dome Ship I guess – and I’d been busy with petty theft…

“-good news is that they’re still circling, and there checking areas where Ax definitely wasn’t last time around. I don’t know if that means Ax has escaped, or if the Dome Ship crashed somewhere different this time… we don’t know exactly where the Dome was when we got yoinked back in time. Maybe something changed there, too.”

“We also don’t know if Ax came back in time with us,” Tobias added, sounding empty. “Not for sure. He might have no idea who we are, or that the Yeerks are after him.”

“Ax has to be our first priority now,” Tobias continued, fists clenching.

“It’s not so easy,” Jake replied. “It’s a big ocean, especially if it isn’t where it was last time. And getting there and back is a full day at least, we need a weekend to do it, and next weekend…” Jake trailed off. Next weekend the Yeerks were doing whatever they were doing at The Gardens, and that was definitely something we needed to keep an eye on.

“So we split up,” Tobias continued, insistent. “Two of us can go to The Gardens, figure out what’s going on there. The other three go after Ax.” He paused. “You know, what – I’m quitting school _now_. I can go and have a look tomorrow.

“Tobias,” I grabbed his hand, giving it a slight squeeze. “We’ll find Ax – but remember what happened last time. If the Visser is ready for us again, it’s going to be a nightmare. And he almost killed us last time we went to rescue Ax.”

“Rachel suggesting caution?” Marco said aloud, “Will wonders never cease?”

“Shut up, Marco,” I snapped. I turned back to Tobias. “We’ll rescue Ax. Of course we will, but you can’t go down there alone. Next weekend, I’ll go with you.” I turned back to Marco, “you can get us a solid reading of where they’ve been looking?”

Marco nodded. “Yeah… but it’s a really big ocean, you know. And that’s before we add in the sharks and the evil aliens looking for the same thing we are.”

Jake looked around at us, deep in thought. “Ok, so next Saturday; Marco – you and Cassie scope out the Gardens. No attack, recon only. Rachel, Tobias, and I will and see if we can find news about Ax.”

I nodded, grateful that I wasn’t the leader right then. I knew Jake would rather be with Cassie, especially given that whatever the Yeerks were planning, her mom could be in danger. But Marco can’t swim and the last time we did this mission he was almost bit in half by a shark. Instead, Jake was tactfully taking the more dangerous mission, and one that for all Tobias’ determination, probably was way out there in terms of actually being accomplished now. It’s still a marvel to me that we found Ax last time; if the ship really had moved this was going in to find a needle in the haystack, where the haystack could swallow entire countries without even noticing and oh giant alien sea monsters.

“We still have to figure out how we’re actually going to spy on Chapman,” Marco grumbled, bringing the conversation around back full circle. I winced, waiting to have to confess that Tobias and I had taken care of the ‘how’ part.

“I mean, we’ve got to spy on a Yeerk safe room, right? And it’s not like we have access to government issue bugging equipment. The stuff we can jerry rig is going to be a joke, and to get enough tape to cover the dead air between us doing this at lunch and the Chapman’s evening meetings is going to be expensive. I still don’t know how good of a mic we’re going to be able to get hold of.”

“Yeah well, we’re just going to have to give it good ol’ human knowhow,” I cut him off, increasingly irritated. The fact I was about to come clean wasn’t helping my mood. Nor was the fact that Tobias was planning to speed up his defection from regular human living. “It’s not like we’re some secret race of android spies like the Chee-”

“Xena, you’re brilliant,” Marco blurted out. Huh?

“Um, yes but what?”

“The Chee. Spying on Chapman isn’t violence, right? We already know Erek is spying on them, basically. The Yeerks anyway. How did we forget the Chee? I bet you they can hook us up with everything we need, who knows we might not even need to sneak in and out, just set it up and presto!”

Jake stood up, a ghost of a smile cracking his face for the first time. “It’s worth a shot. You guys up for visiting Erek?”

We left the park, our moods considerably brightened. Erek King is the Chee we know best, and while they aren’t all the same, the Chee are basically all in favor of defeating the Yeerks, even if they refuse to do it directly. Which grates me, the Chee could have the entire invasion over in like ten seconds if they were willing to override their programming. But if they wouldn’t do _that_ , we could at least get everything else we could out of them in exchange.

And this time, we knew how the Chee thought. We had an ace up our sleeve this time. And if they had everything we needed… I shared a look with Tobias and mimed zipping my lips – if we didn’t need the money, we could save it for a rainy day and tell the others about it then.

It was about a twenty minute walk from the park to the neighborhood where Erek lived. I wondered if he was technically a Controller at this point; of course, in reality he had a Yeerk trapped in his head that _he_ controlled, but at some point Erek King had joined The Sharing as a voluntary Controller to infiltrate the Yeerks.

“You know,” I entered the conversation with a spring in my step. “There’s a good chance Erek will know what’s going on at The Gardens. And maybe what’s going on out in the ocean.” The more I thought about it, the sunnier things got in those twenty minutes.

Jake knocked on Erek’s door, a perfectly normal suburban house in a regular neighborhood if a little over the top in terms of having an immaculate lawn. A minute later, the door opened.

We had talked about it on the way over and concluded the best thing to do was give Erek a rundown on everything that had happened, up to and including the travelling through time. Jake stepped forward as Erek appeared in the door. He didn’t look surprised to see us, but he didn’t look pleased either. On the other hand ‘Erek’ is just a hologram portrayed by the Chee beneath, so it didn’t really mean anything either way-

“Hello, _Animorphs_.”

That though, did. Whatever speel Jake had ready died on his lips and we all just went inside, Erek holding the door for us. When he still didn’t say anything and started walking back into the house, through the kitchen and gesturing with his head for us to follow, I assumed we were heading to the secret basement dogpark under Erek’s house. See, the Chee are these pacifist robots from some ancient civilization that were wiped out when humans were still trying to distinguish the blunt side of the stick from the pointy one. Their creators – the Pemalites – all died at the hands of the Howlers who are basically the shock troops of Crayak – a sort of omnipotent evil alien thing, and the Chee fled to Earth and (I don’t know how), somehow infused the… spirit? Essence? Of their creators into wolves, creating what we know of as dogs.

When you start learning about aliens, you realize there’s a _lot_ to take in.

We didn’t go down to the secret alien doggytopia though, we just stopped in living room, the perfectly human living room. Erek turned to face us, squaring his shoulders at Jake and crossing his arms. He looked like a perfectly normal human boy… and he didn’t look thrilled with us being in his house.

“So, you came back too?” Jake asked, jumping straight to the crux of it. “Did all the Chee?” He frowned. “Or…” he floundered, looking at Marco. “Does time travel effect you? You know what I’m talking about, right?” Jake cut himself off. “Sorry, uh – so Erek, what’s up?”

Erek’s face (such as it is) betrayed nothing. “Is it true we defeated the Howlers?” he asked instead, as if Jake hadn’t spoken. I looked around at my friends, everyone was as confused as I was.

“The Howl- ok let’s take a step back,” Marco suggested, holding up his hands palms out. “It would help if we all knew exactly what page we’re on, which means it would be good to know if you came back with us.”

Erek turned away from Jake and towards Marco now. “Did you defeat the Howlers?”

Marco sighed. “Yeah, we beat them. Well, not like you know, all of them. But we destroyed them as Mr. Evil Eye’s shock troops when,” even in the seriousness of the situation, I caught the undercurrent of a snicker in Marco’s voice creeping in. “Jake kissed Cassie.”

Erek didn’t laugh. His holographic visage curled in anger. “And you undid it?”

“We didn’t undo that on purpose,” Cassie interjected before Marco could retort. “Things got confusing. We ended up chasing Visser Four through time and then we had the power and we just… see, there’s this thing called the Time Matrix and-”

“I know what the Time Matrix is,” Erek snarled. “The Pemalites, my… they were a creation of the Ellimist. It was-“ Erek cut off clenching a fist and then released it. “

“Erek, we’re sorry,” Jake cut in, taking a small step forward. “We had a chance to come back, and we took it. We saw the chance to fix mistakes and we didn’t think about the successes that we were erasing at the same time.”

Erek nodded, but his face was otherwise blank now. “Yes. Like the Kandrona. Visser Three hasn’t wasted any time using your attempt and his successful defense to realign priorities on this planet.” Erek pointed to his own head. “A general order has already gone out, and Yeerks perceived as loyal to the Visser are already replacing those left behind from when Visser One was in direct control of the planet.”

Marco cursed. I didn’t disagree.

“That’s actually why we came,” Jake seized the opening. “Visser Three came back with us obviously. We think he was brought back Crayak because we triggered the Time Matrix. And he clearly remembers his past mistakes. We need to figure out what he’s up to, what’s changed. We need intelligence, ASAP.”

Erek snorted at that. It’s fascinating, his instinct for human reactions even when with people who all knew his true self. But hey, he’s been on Earth as long as human civilization… and not even counting dogs, who knows maybe there are human reactions that are actually imitations of the Chee?

“The network we built doesn’t exist yet, and already Visser Three is expanding security protocols. My own Yeerk,” he tapped his head, “is still a new and of no particular note. It will take time.”

“We have a lead of our own,” Jake continued, “But well, we need bugging equipment and nothing we’re likely to get at the mall is going to do the job. If you could provide us with something – anything, we can take care of the rest.”

Erek was silent for a minute. “The Yeerk you want to spy on, is high ranking?”

Jaked nodded. “Chapman.”

“Iniss 226 is one of the highest ranking Yeerks that are permanently stationed on the planet,” Erek responded instantly. “He reports directly to Visser Three. If a bug were found on him, he would likely be put to death. The Chee cannot-”

“Oh, cut that bullshit,” a voice snapped out. A second later I realized it was mine. Everyone was looking at me in different combinations of shock, horror, and amazement. Erek’s was frozen. Literally.

I closed my eyes for a moment then barreled forward, frustration at everything pouring out of me in waves. “What exactly is the deal with you Chee? You can’t kill people, ok I get that. But you can spy on the Yeerks, even when it’s obvious that at some point that’s going to result in warfare. You can’t fight, but you can set us up into positions where _we_ can, and _do_.” A lightbulb went off in my head – more like a volcano really.

“The Howlers! You’re mad. You’re really mad that we _didn’t_ go and kill them all.” I scoffed. “Yeah, real pacifists. Just let someone else do your dirty work.”

I felt hollow, the heat had burned through me as quickly as it had started. The others all looked shellshock. Great – now on top of failing to destroy the Kandrona, I’d gone and burned a bridge with one of the few allies we had, handicapped though they were.

“You still view us as either computers as you understand them, or as human,” Erek replied into the void as if I hadn’t just (justifiably) blown up at him. “But we are neither. Did I tell you the first time around, that _Chee_ means _friend_? Our creators did not deny their friends free will, for without the ability to reject friendship, it cannot be accepted.”

“So wait, you _can_ fight,” Marco appealed, grasping.

“No.” Erek’s voice was like iron, a tone I’d only heard from him a few times before. “The Chee will not cause deliberate harm directly. The Chee will not kill. None of us have. None of us ever will. But among the Chee… there is a range in how we interpret and navigate that programming when the choice is not so stark.” For the first time, his voice even sounded slightly apologetic. “We have free will, such as anyone does.”

“There are even some Chee – a small minority, but they exist – who believe that the Yeerk invasion should be allowed to happen. That covert infiltration of your species as current Yeerk protocol will result in the minimum number of deaths.”

I was about to explode at the horror of _that_ bombshell, as was everyone else by the looks of things but Erek continued in haste.

“They are few, but it proves the point. And so,” Erek stared at me, “If I choose to not help you on a mission that would lead to a specific death, that is my choice. I have been around you humans enough to know that your own personal morality is not necessarily rational, but you do as you can because you must.” He held up his hands. “We aren’t so different.”

“We don’t want to kill Chapman,” Jake stepped in. “He’s a nice guy, and we’re friends with his daughter, and he’s innocent in all this. That’s _why_ we want your help; anything we use of our own won’t be as good and will be a lot more dangerous, both for us and for him.” A pause. “Please.”

“One condition, for now.” Erek said at last, and I could see a flicker of unpleasant surprise twitch on Jake’s face. “When the chance comes to defeat the Howler’s again, you will take it.”

Marco was clearly ready to object, but Jake shook his head. “I will,” he replied. “I promise. But we’re not going to go out of our way to defeat the Howlers when our own planet is in danger. And I can’t speak for the others. But help us, and I promise that if we get the chance again, I’ll take it.”

That meant a lot coming from Jake, because Crayak has a special hatred for him. But Jake was willing to risk it anyway to get us the Chee’s help. “It might not happen anyway,” I added. “Why would Crayak want to risk a repeat of losing again? But if it happens again, I’m in too.”

“It will,” Erek said simply. “I will help.” Another Chee walked into the living room a minute later, Erek’s “father”. Without a word, he went up to Jake and put something in his hand.

“You will need to emplace it yourselves. After you do so, push the nib on top. The casing will dissolve and the internal hardware will fuse into the surface – it won’t be noticeable.”

“The needle acts as an antenna.” Jake held up a small silver needle about three inches long, like a sewing needle but thicker. Obviously you lack our own electromagnetic pulses, but if you are within a range of…” he paused. “Two hundred feet? I think, I’ve never considered this from the biological perspective. But yes, that should do it.”

“Do _what_?” Marco asked for all of us.

Erek explained it again. Then again. Very long story short, so long as we held this three inch needle that Jake was holding within range of the metal pea thing, the dissolving thing would sent out an signal that the needle, connected to our brains through the tiny emissions of of our _bodies_ releasing energy, we could basically create telepathic tv.

“So we hide in Chapman’s bushes and we can um, channel surf everything that’s taken place in the secret room?” Cassie asked, sounding skeptical.

“Yes,” Erek replied.

“How long does it last?” I asked.

“About four hundred years.”

“That’s good value,” was all Marco could say to that, which was more than I had.

“Sounds good,” Tobias replied for the first time, sounding extremely nonchalant. I stared at him. He shrugged. “What, a week ago I was a hawk until I time travelled. Brain TV isn’t exactly outlandish even if I can’t wrap my head around it.”

Okay, when he put it like _that_.

All in all a success. We left with a better understanding of how the Chee actually worked, we had some super advanced alien spy kit that would work better if one of us were a robot but hey any port in a storm, and it looked like Tobias and I were going to get out of this without having to bring up anything because hey, it’s not like we were going to use the money. No need to endanger-

“Oh, hey!” I hissed to Tobias and fell back from the group as we headed back to the mall. “Weren’t you going to see about crashing with Erek?” Granted, I wasn’t exactly keen on the idea especially with how frosty Erek had been, but I wanted to make an effort, show Tobias I was supporting his idea. Better to drop out from school than risk becoming a hawk again. And hey, given how things were going, it probably wasn’t long until I gave thought to dropping out of school to fight full time too. If it weren’t for my sisters and mom keeping me in the normal world I would have dropped it already, even if I don’t always like to admit that, even to myself.

He shook his head though. “Erek’s still keeping secrets,” he explained before I had time to worry about it. “He never answered the question.”

“What question?” I asked, loud enough that the others stopped and looked back at us.

“He never confirmed that he was actually a time traveler, did he?”

“Awww, you’re right,” Marco replied. “Damn.”

“He has to be though,” I interjected, thinking back on the conversation. “I mean, he knew about us being _Animorphs_ and the Time Matrix and all-”

“But he _didn’t_ know about us and the Howlers?” Cassie beat me to it. Her eyes went wide. “And when you said _If_ Crayak gave us a second chance at the Howlers, all he saw was _It Will._ ”

“He once told me that he remembers every memory with the clarity as if it’s happening right now,” Marco added. “But he didn’t know whether or not he had told us that _Chee_ means friend.”

“He’s not a time traveler, but Someone told him.” Jake concluded for us. Tentatively, everyone nodded.

“But who?” I asked. “And what exactly does he know?” By the time we got back to the mall, nobody had a definite answer to that one.

* * *

**Chapter 5**

* * *

Monday afternoon we put Erek’s super spy thing in Chapman’s basement. And by _we_ , I mean Jake and Marco. After morphing Mr. Chapman for the last bit of _Animorphs_ business on Sunday so the other’s (minus Cassie) could acquire him-through-me, I realized I hadn’t really thought through all the implications of turning into a middle-aged man. Double weird as someone we actually knew. The others acquired me but after that we couldn’t call it a day fast enough.

Anyway, that left Jake and Marco to sneak into the Chapmans right after school ended. I didn’t mind – my mind was already focused on my own plans for the afternoon with Tobias. The school day crawled by, but at last I was out for the day. I’d ridden my bike instead of taking the bus, which was good because I wasn’t going home. And with my overstuffed bookbag, I couldn’t exactly morph and fly, either.

I rode toward Tobias’ house as quickly as I could. It wasn’t as bad an area as the dealer guy’s, but it’s not the sort of place I’d want to be by myself late at night, either. Thankfully, before I got too far I heard Tobias’ thoughtspeak in my head – I looked up, and caught sight of a familiar hawk circling around me. I gave him a small smile, confident he would see it.

((He’s home – you sure you want to do this?)) he asked.

I nodded, eyes back on the road. I stopped at the end of the street, and Tobias directed me to a vacant house, the front of the yard screened by a half-dead hedge. Leaning my bike against the interior side of it, I began to morph. I grew a little taller. My hair turned darker and shrank a little bit, and gained a bit of a curl. I gained a little weight, my feet began to pinch in my shoes… and that was it, basically. I was Mrs. Chapman.

((Weird.))

“Yeah,” I mumbled to myself, scurrying through my backpack. I’d grabbed some of my mom’s clothes this morning so I wasn’t going to look like a forty year old woman dressed like a teenager in too small clothes walking down the street. My mom and Mrs. Chapman weren’t a perfect match, but it was close enough and I doubted Tobias’s uncle was going to care. I had to wear my own shoes though, and those hurt. Not like the time I had partially morphed elephant and torn them to ribbons, but it didn’t make biking fun.

I got back on the bike and rode the rest of the way – I probably still looked a little strange to be honest. I mean my bike isn’t exactly Disney Princess but it’s not what you’d expect to see an adult riding down the street, either. Oh well.

It went so much easier than I thought, that it made me kind of angry just how much his uncle didn’t care. I mean, I had heard about how this went the first time, when Jake just showed up at his house and said Tobias had moved back with his aunt. No Child Services not even an official looking adult carrying papers or whatever and his uncle had just taken Jake’s word as some random kid and gone about his day, not even checking up once that Tobias actually was with his aunt on the other side of the country. This time an adult woman came biking into his yard and after demanding to know who the hell I was, he couldn’t care less. He didn’t ask for papers or proof or anything, or ask about Tobias at all.

((Don’t sweat it,)) a voice called above me. ((It’s all in the past now.)) Clearly, Tobias could see the anger on my face, or maybe he’d been listening in.

I demorphed at the same place, and waited a minute as Tobias came round the back of the house.

“So, that went well,” he said, grinning.

“He’s awful,” I replied, indignation clear in my voice.

Tobias shrugged. “Yeah well, any hangups I had I got over years ago. Ready for phase two?”

“Yeah, let’s go.” We went back towards the school, then tuned off in the direction of Cassie’s. She was waiting for us in the barn when we arrived, tending on a baby owl. She didn’t look particularly happy.

“That’s really nice camping gear you have,” she said without so much as a howdy do. “Brand new.” She gestured to the pile of stuff Tobias had moved in earlier in the day.

“Yeah,” was all Tobias offered.

I let out a breath – I wasn’t going to play this double game any longer. “We stole it,” I blurted, Cassie’s eyes turning to me in shock. “Well not the gear – we paid for that. But we stole the money from his uncle’s drug dealer, Saturday evening.”

“Wow. Um… I don’t know what to say,” Cassie replied, shaking her head as her brain rebooted at the knowledge I was a criminal. “Guys, we don’t do this.” Her voice cracked, and her face was pleaful.

“I know.” I replied, cutting her off. “I’m sorry, I know this is a line we shouldn’t be crossing, and I won’t cross it again.” I looked at Tobias, and he gave a short nod to me, then to Cassie. “If it helps, we didn’t do it for the gear, we did it when we thought we were going to need to buy our own recording stuff.” I sighed. “And we screwed up anyway, it was dumb.”

Cassie was silent for a bit. “I know it’s hard,” she said at last. “But this isn’t who we are. I won’t say anything, but promise you won’t do anything like this again. _Please_.”

“I promise,” I replied. “Have you heard from Jake?”

She gave me her evil eye – the look when you know the person is trying to shift away from an uncomfortable topic. “Yeah, he just called. It went well. I guess now we just wait to find out what they’re up to.”

“Anyway,” Cassie turned back to the issue at hand. “Are you guys sure you want to do this tonight? Is there really a rush?”

“Might as well,” Tobias replied with a shrug. “Less chance getting caught and anyway, I kinda miss it.”

 _It_ was the Hork Bajir Valley. After the less than perfect reunion with Erek, Tobias had decided that was the better choice. He wouldn’t be dissuaded by things like the lack of electricity or running water. “I’m a hawk in a human body,” he had said. “I’ll deal.”

I didn’t push it. Instead while the rest of us were at school, Tobias had taken the bus into the city, where hopefully nobody would link back a kid buying camping gear with a soon to be missing kid who, if Visser Three cared enough to recall, was the human son of Elfangor. Tobias pointing _that_ out had been the final argument about why it was best that Tobias get out of dodge, and without too many connections to the rest of us.

We lugged Tobias’ gear out to the paddock and acquired two of Cassie’s horses. I had morphed a racehorse before and it had been a fun morph, so going back to horse wasn’t a bad thing. I took a brown horse with black bits – Cassie told me that technically that’s called _Bay._ Tobias was a light tan (“Chestnut!”) horse I remember riding with Cassie when I was little. Then, once morphed, Cassie began tying everything on to us as best she could. “We really should have saddlebagged you both,” Cassie said with a huff as she tied a duffle bag to my back with some spare rope that had been lying around the barn. “That will have to do. It should hold on, but if it shifts it’s not going to be comfortable for you.”

((It’ll be fine,)) I replied. ((Thanks, Cass.))

She rubbed my nose, and I let out a snort. ((Tickles!))

“You guys ready? My parents shouldn’t be home for another half hour but it’s probably best not to push it,” Cassie said while giving my nose another pat.

I let out a whinny of agreement and then Tobias and I began to trot out into the woods behind Cassie’s house that marks the boundary of the state forest. It took almost all of the two hours we had to get up to the Hork Bajir valley (now currently devoid of Hork Bajir) and that meant we were on a tight deadline not only with our morphing time, but available sunlight. Even worse, if we demorphed along the way we wouldn’t ever be able to get this gear back on ourselves, which meant stumbling about at sunset trying to find a way to remember where the stuff even was for a second attempt later.

Thankfully, Tobias knows these woods like the back of his hand. Or rather, his wing, if I’m being honest. He’s tracked all through here, and even without a bird eye view he got us where we needed to go, and we arrived at the mouth of the valley with at least half an hour to spare.

((This would be so much easier if we could drive,)) I said as we ambled over the last ridge. ((I miss having my learner’s permit. How did you manage to get all this stuff from the bus stop to Cassie’s anyway?))

((Three trips,)) he replied. ((It wasn’t fun. And most of the bits and pieces I got secondhand from Army Navy – it’s only the tent and sleeping bag that are new, and a few other things I didn’t want to skimp on.))

((If you need anything – don’t be afraid to ask, ok? We’ll take care of it. There’s no need to live rougher than you have to.))

He laughed. ((I’m way past that point. And anyway, I’ll be flying into town every day – all that’s happening is I’m missing school. You should be jealous!))

I was silent for a moment. ((That’s not all that’s going to happen Tobias, and you know it. You can’t be seen anymore. If you’re with us in public, you won’t be as _you_. You’ll be the hawk.))

((I’ll still be me, Rachel.))

((You know what I meant. But yeah. I know.)) I replied, not wanting another fight. We had entered the valley proper now, and there was a small rise overlooking the creek, shaded by a grove of what Tobias told me were Maple trees. There was a small spur about halfway up the rise, sheltered between the summit and the grove. Tobias said it was a good spot for now. I didn’t argue – it’s not like I know anything about it.

We set up camp, or rather I unloaded things while Tobias put up the tent and unrolled his sleeping bag. By the time we were finished, the sun was just about to peter out over the west end of the valley, sending long shadows down over everything around us.

“You better get back,” Tobias said at last. “It’s a decent flight back.”

“Yeah, I guess.” I almost made a joke of it, my mom being over the top… but having just seen Tobias’ have no family at all that gave a damn about him, I didn’t. “I’ll see you later, ok?” I squeezed his arm and he gave me a faint smile in the dying light.

“Yeah – I’ll be sure to fly over the school when the day ends – gonna spend the morning following Mrs. Chapman and see if I can’t get any more reads from the hospital. And then think I’m going back to that plant and see if I can confirm the Taxxon theory.” He smirked, “so have fun in algeabra, I guess.”

“Jerk,” I replied with a laugh, and then morphed owl for the flight home.

I usually love owl morph, but it was lonely that night. I thought about picking up my bike from Cassie’s but figured I’d get it tomorrow – I was pushing my curfew far enough as it was. With nothing to do I just thought about everything that was going on, of Tobias’ withdrawal back into his old self no matter what I tried. Of the tension between me and Cassie, not helped by my own impulsiveness and Cassie’s own stubbornness that she’s always on the moral highground. Of how nothing was going the way we planned, first with the Yeerks and then with the Chee and now with Ax.

At least Jake and Marco had gotten us inside of Chapman’s operations room – and I could take pride in the fact that even if they had been the ones to do the final bit, I had been the one to come up with the idea somewhat _and_ done the first infiltration.

“Where have you been?” My mom asked as soon as I came through the door.

“Hi mom. Sorry. A friend of mine is moving across the country and this was his last day. We were just hanging out.”

My mom’s look softened… slightly. “Oh, I’m sorry dear. Anyone I know?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Tobias? He was more friends with Jake I guess but,”

“Eeeeeeeeeeew,” Jordan came squealing into the kitchen like she’d just won the lottery. “I _knew_ it! _Rachel has a booooooyfriend._ ” I could have killed the little squirt right then if she hadn’t gotten me off the hook.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said to my mom. “He came over a few days ago and watched a movie with us, but that’s it. And anyway he’s not here anymore.”

“Oh honey,” my mom looked at me, then at the clock. Then back at me. Finally she let out a small sigh. “There’s still some pizza in the fridge if you haven’t already eaten. Just keep an eye on the time when you’re out.”

I stuck my tongue at Jordan when my mom turned away. She pulled a face and flounced out the room. I took the smaller of the remaining slices of pizza and then went to bed. I lay awake for a long time, thinking about my family, Tobias being on the run, Jake and Melissa sleeping next to Yeerks, Marco dealing with his mom coming back soon… and it hit me then, that my dad was going to be leaving for a job out of state in a few weeks. He’d be coming here offering me a chance to move out with him. I had completely forgotten about that; it was just so far down on the list of things that had happened over the past two years that it hadn’t even register.

And it didn’t. It was just this thing that was going to happen and I’d already made up my mind and any anguish I had spent over it had already happened. I guess, I thought as I drifted off to sleep, that maybe I understood where Tobias was coming from.

We sat together at lunch the next day. Normally Jake and Marco sit with some of Jake’s friends from the JV team, but it’s not exactly weird and it was an open secret at this point that Jake sorta liked Cassie, so it was fine so long as we didn’t do it all the time. Jake confirmed that the mission had gone well – Marco had kept watch on the roof in Osprey morph while Jake went into the house as a cockroach and then just morphed Chapman and entered the room, simple as that.

“Beats being torn apart as ants,” was all Marco added to Jake’s commentary.

“I stuck the ball under the desk,” Jake went on. “And it was weird but it just squashed against it like a piece of gum or something. Then a minute later it was like it didn’t exist. So tonight,” he lowered his voice, “tonight I thought I’d go over and see if it works.”

“I’ll come with,” I said at once. “It might be good to go in as well, you know – last time around the Chapman’s talked about Yeerk things around the kitchen table.”

Jake frowned at that. I rolled my eyes. “We’ll go, we’ll check it out, and then I’ll be quick. Hey, why don’t we make an evening of it? I’ll just tell my mom I’m hanging with Aunt Jean – it’ll be fine. And anyway I have a gymnastics class Wednesday and meet Thursday so the sooner the better.”

“Yeah ok – but nothing crazy, right.” I gave him my best innocent eyes. Marco snorted. Jake pushed my arm in mock disgust and shared a look with Cassie.

“They’re already an old couple thinking about their crazy child,” Marco snickered. “Anyway, hate to say it but Rachel’s probably right, you two live the closest to the Chapman’s and I’ve got to make dinner tonight for my dad.”

We cut off then – Melissa came into the lunchroom late, and whether it was just one of those random things of chance or the fact that I’d reached out again, she sat with us.

“Hey Mel,” Marco started up, the only one of us not to cut off and look like we’d just been caught doing something we shouldn’t. “Check these two out,” he pointed at Jake and Cassie, who slid slightly further apart from each other. Jake poked Marco with his fork and Cassie took a sudden interest in her mashed potatoes. It’s weird being de-aged – not long before we came back in time Cassie and Jake _finally_ kissed and had sorta become a thing, but now we were two years younger again and nobody was quite sure where we all stood. Another casualty (hopefully not for long, I swear those two were unbearable enough last time dancing around) of our escapade.

Melissa let out a giggle though and then we discussed the gymnastics meet, so I guess Marco didn’t do to bad of a job, all things considered. Then with a spark of genius, I asked if she wanted to hang tonight – I mentioned I was having dinner with my aunt so we couldn’t stay late, but it would be cool to come over for a bit.

She hesitated, and I turned on the begging. She agreed.

“So now what,” Jake asked as we walked home together. “We can’t exactly figure out the Chee stuff while we’re talking to Melissa.”

“We can’t, but _you_ can. Trust me, I can keep us occupied talking about things you don’t want to listen to, and you can just zone out or whatever. It’s perfect! And we won’t risk our first time figuring this out being caught snooping in the bushes or whatever.”

Jake waggled his head at that, internally weighing the pros and cons. “Yeah. Ok fair enough. But when you go back in tonight, I’m going with you as flea. No buts.”

I didn’t even bother. For one, it’s not like I could stop him. For two, the last time around Jake sneaking on as a flea had saved my life. “You already picked up a flea?” I said instead.

“Yeah, picked it off Homer last night.”

“Is it weirder that after everything we’ve done, fleas are still gross?”

“Better than tick.”

“True.”

I live two streets down from Jake, who lives three down from the Chapmans, so after we passed my house and I left my mom a note that I was heading over to Jake’s for the evening.. Jordan and Sara had an afternoon playgroup for afterschool (which Jordan loves even though half the time now she pretends she’s too old for) so there weren’t any additional complications. Then we went to Jake’s, to make sure his mom knew what was up in case my mom called, and also because Melissa comes home from school with her dad, so we had a bit of time to kill anyway.

“Hey Jake – oh, hi Rachel,” Aunt Jean beamed at me as we stepped inside. “Oh what a nice surprise!”

I gave my aunt a hug, and she asked if I could stay for dinner even before Jake gave me an excuse. My aunt really is the sweetest person. My dad and Jake’s dad are brothers so we’re not technically related, but she’s probably the one I’m closest with. After my parents’ divorce, I haven’t seen as much of them as I would have liked – maybe there is some good stuff to come out of all this now, if I had an excuse to come over to Jake’s more often.

“We’ll be back before six,” Jake promised. “Where’s Tom?”

Aunt Jean rolled her eyes. “Out with his friends from that club again,” but her tone was light and breezy, and her eyes showed genuine warmth. “It’s good to see what a nice young man we’ve raised, so caring.”

Jake’s smile tightened. “Yeah. Well anyway, I guess I’ll see him later then.”

“What was that about?” I hissed as soon as we were back outside.

Jake shrugged. “I’m trying to keep track of things and how they relate to last time. Tom’s Yeerk was starting to become a pretty big deal last time around, I’m trying to figure out if he’s more involved now or if anything’s changed.” His tone was gravelly, barely contained anger.

“Is it helping?”

He let out a sigh. “I don’t know. I’m trying to remember what Tom was doing exactly right now last time but I don’t really remember. It’s such a long time ago and it just wasn’t a big deal back then. It sucks,” another long breath. “Anyway, game plan. You ready?”

I nodded. “It’s going to be fine.”

“Yeah,” Jake paused for a moment as we came into view of the Chapmans house. “This sucks, you know? A few months ago this would have just been us hanging out.”

I nodded. “Remember when Marco said the weirdest thing about going into middle school and having our friend’s dad in charge?”

“Heh, I was thinking about that earlier actually.”

Jake knocked on the door. Mr. Chapman answered – “Jake. Rachel, good to see you. He turned to me. “Ready for the big day?” I paused at that, _what!_ “You girls will do great, I’m sure.”

I laughed it off. “Sorry, yes um well, everything except the beam,” I said, my grimace coming honestly. Chapman nodded in that adult ‘I understand’ way. “Just do you’re best,” he moved aside, motioning us in. “Melissa is up in her room. Don’t forget to leave the door open.”

We headed up, and again I was left wondering if Chapman was being a little more… human, for our sake, or whether some general order had gone out since our return. There had been cracks in Yeerk security even without our involvement starting to show up last time around, and maybe somehow they were starting to patch that up… or maybe I was just being paranoid. We _were_ company, afterall, and even how Chapman’s Yeerk acted at home, he’d always been perfectly undercover at school.

“Hey Mel!” I burst in before Jake, embracing her in a big hug before she could push me away. Fluffer McKitty bounced off the bed and up onto the windows ledge, which was half open, but made himself comfortable there away from the bustle.

“Hey guys,” She gave us a shadow of a smile. I took a seat on the edge of her bed and Jake went and sat down against the back wall – where Melissa would have to look at one of us and not quite see the other from her place at her desk. My job then was to make sure she was looking at me, and not Jake.

I carried the conversation. Melissa might be opening up a little bit (ok, a lot) more than last time, but she was still somewhat out of it. Her answers were straightforward and a lot of the stuff we used to talk about for hours just wasn’t having an impact. Finally I managed to get a conversation going about our meet – I’ve told you earlier that of all of us in class, Melissa has the real talent and passion, and I guess she was still hanging onto that as her thread of normality. It was the only topic she really cared about.

What broke me out of my chattering was Melissa’s giggling. It started me, bringing me out of my own chatter. “Jake, you awake?” she was turning to my cousin, who jolted up. “Girl talk boring you?” she teased.

Jake shook his head. “Nah, it’s fine – sorry. What were we talking about?”

“Wow cuz, what a super considerate guest you are,” I dialed up the sarcasm to eleven. “Sorry we’re not talking about your beloved hoops.”

It worked to regain Melissa’s attention. “Aww, don’t give him too hard of a time.” She turned her head back to Jake, any further thought of his trance forgotten. “Don’t you have tryouts soon?”

“Huh. Oh yeah, no we already had those.” He said after a moment, brain processing just what she was talking about. “I didn’t make the team,” he shrugged like it was no big deal. Which you know, two years on after fighting aliens it really wasn’t.

“Oh – sorry!” Melissa replied, sounding mortified, a hand clasping over her mouth a second later. “I can’t believe I forgot.”

Jake waved it off. “Next year maybe. Anyway, enough about me – what’s the competition looking like for you?”

We spend another half hour with Melissa and then made our excuses. I made a point of saying we needed to go out after the meet no matter what happened, then belatedly remembered I was planning to spend the weekend in the ocean trying to find our missing comrade.

“Friday,” I amended quickly. “You should come over; I’m looking after the girls but we can make a night of it.”

“Maybe,” a tiny ghost of a smile.

Jake gave me a quick rundown of what he’d seen. First of all, it worked. And it _worked_ ; Jake described it as being in two places at once, in Melissa’s bedroom and down in that room. He wasn’t just watching it happen, it was like he was living it in real time. Visser Three had been furious, but not his usual blustery self; more like a hot simmer. Chapman was supposed to organize for a _fourth_ ship to start plying the ghost for hints of the Dome Ship, so that at least was a positive for us. There was a threat that time was running out before the council expected to hear that any guerilla force on Earth, and a general sense that Visser Three had a lot of pots on the fire.

“Do you ever think it’s weird that almost everything we do, Chapman shows up?” I asked as he came to an end of his explanation. “Like if you wanted Iniss whatever number he is to be in charge of this stuff, wouldn’t it make more sense to stick him in the mayor or chief of police or something? I mean Chapman’s actually pretty well poised for The Sharing, but some of this stuff just seems way beyond him, you know?”

Jake nodded. “When I was a Controller, I got a glimpse of that. Yeerks are… pretty territorial about hosts. It’s a big deal to exchange hosts, and a lot of Yeerks refuse to do so – there’s a point where even the Vissers can’t really make them. Like it’s one thing they all accept, that a Yeerk has the right to veto their hosts.” Jake shrugged, looking very uncomfortable – he doesn’t like to talk about those three days. “I don’t know. Temrash taunted me a bit, and memories bled through at the end there during, you know. I asked Ax about it afterward and he didn’t know.”

I tapped my chin. “I guess it sorta makes sense,” I said at last. “Otherwise the head haunch would have demanded Visser Three turn over his Andalite body, right? Even Yeerks must have some level of culture and society and law,” I scrunched myself in disgust. “Don’t tell Cassie I said that.”

“Something to think about, though,” Jake said instead. “It might come in handy one day.”

“Yeh well, I doubt tonight.” I said instead. “C’mon, your mom probably has dinner ready to go.”

Dinner was good – pot roast. I envy Jake’s family to be honest. His dad’s a pediatrician and his mom a freelance writer, so it’s not like they aren’t as busy or professional as my own parents… but they made it work in a way my parents didn’t. Even Tom was there, acting like the older cousin who was interested in what I was up to, wishing me luck in the meet and then bringing up the Sharing, which was thinking of opening up its own sports rec league. I kept it light, and said I would think about it, and he was satisfied with that.

We snuck back over to the Chapman’s after I helped my aunt put away the leftovers and chatted for five minutes, and Jake made a show of offering to walk me home. His mom told him to hurry, making a pointed comment about homework not doing itself. I grabbed my bag, and bemoaned that my bike was still at Cassie’s.

It was dusk, long shadows covering the street and we went behind the same house as last time to morph. Jake went first, figuring it would be better to go flea and land on human me, rather than try morphing directly onto cat me especially incase the cat pounced before I was ready. Last time, Cassie had just patted him onto me without me even knowing.

I looked away of course – I have enough memories of gross morphs to need another one, and five minutes later we were bounding for the Chapman’s house. I stopped at the yard line and sniffed the air. A tom lived here, obviously – _I_ lived here… but I couldn’t smell myself being present in the house right now. The cat brain didn’t care to follow this train of logic, it didn’t care for such abstractions as trying to sense another version of itself. But my human brain pushed through it, and I gave Jake the all clear.

We went in through Melissa’s window. She was on her bed now, just looking up at the ceiling. She wasn’t crying at least, so maybe we had helped a little bit. There was no time for her right now though; I scratched at the door and a minute later Melissa got off the bed, calling me “silly boy” with no real emotion but at least letting me – us – into the main part of the house.

((What’s going on,)) Jake came into my head. ((I know we’re inside but that’s about it. I forgot just how useless this morph is at pretty much, well everything.)) There was a pause. ((Except finding blood. Sorry.))

((Cuz, shut up.)) I replied, giving a warning scratch with my hind leg.

((Hey!))

((You earned that,)) I bit back. ((Anyway, we’re down the stairs now I’m going into the kitchen so keep quiet.))

I could hear voices in the kitchen. Hushed, and the cat wasn’t really interested in listening to them. But I was. I padded over to the open door, sitting in the entrance.

“- wants the Andalite bandits. He… he used a Vanarx. A _Yeerkbane_ to destroy Iniss One-Seven-Four”

“He _what!?_ ” Mrs Chapman cried out, her voice full of shock and horror. Then she lowered her voice again, “An Iniss of the second century, destroyed like _that_. For what!?”

“The Yeerk Pool fiasco,” Chapman glowered. “As if there is anyway right now to keep out an Andalite spy that seeks entry. Did we not order biofilters as soon as we heard they had landed? Didn’t Iniss One-Seven-Four make the best she could out of the human resources on such short notice? That Andalite-Controlling _scum_.”

My brain froze. I had heard a similar conversation to this last time. _How_ had I not remembered it. How had we been so green that we hadn’t noticed what an opportunity this was for us. Chapman, the Visser Three’s goto henchman for at least our city and possibly all of earth… _despised_ Visser Three. In private, openly!

((Jake, this is big. Chapman hates Visser Three. Like really _really_ hates him.))

((What happened?))

((Hold on.))

“-don’t say that!” Mrs. Chapman was up now, and I don’t know if it was some sort of nervous Yeerk tic but she began washing the dishes, her hands scrubbing fiercely as her eyes stared outside emptily, hollow pupils reflected in the windows back to me.

“If anything happens to Visser Three, it will happen to us, first. If he had any idea what you’re saying, you’ll have to deal with the Vanarx, too.” She shuddered.

“I know,” Mr. Chapman grimaced. But his wife shook her head, vehemently.

“I mean it. He’s different now. I don’t know how or why, but you can feel it can’t you? Even those of us who do not talk to him directly sense that something has changed.”

Mr. Chapman rubbed his eyes. “You’re right. But I haven’t any idea as to what. The ambush against the Andalite dome ship was such a success even with a few survivors landing on the planet, but since then he has become even more paranoid than usual. I wish I knew…” He clenched a fist. “I hope whatever it is, he’s screwed something up and he’s hiding it. If I could get word to the Emperor, or even Visser One, I’d –“

“Hedrick! Iniss… enough of this. No more tonight.” She gestured her head up towards Melissa’s room. “There’s nothing more we can do. Nothing good can come of this.”

Taking the hint, I let out a large meow announcing my presence at last, and then made a dash for the food bowl. It was disgusting – how a cat eats that stuff I have no idea, but then, maybe the cat isn’t comparing it to his aunt’s pot roast. After a single bite trying to look like I owned the place, I let out a meow and sauntered to the cat door, and didn’t look back until I was back at the neighbor’s house and putting my shoes back on.

“What happened in there?” Jake asked as we crept around and started heading for my house in earnest. I felt a bounce in my step. I turned to him and grinned.

“Enemy of my Enemy right? We don’t need a Yeerk Peace Movement, we need a Yeerk civil war.” Even I could feel my grin turn feral. “And Iniss Whatever is going to lead it for us, or else we’re going to turn him over to Visser Three.

Jake looked alarmed for a second. Then I proceeded to tell him everything I had heard. In the end, he gave me a thoughtful nod. “We’re risking Chapman though. Melissa’s dad. I don’t really want to do that if we don’t have to.”

“But the Yeerks won’t know that,” I pointed out.

“That’s true.” We walked another street in silence. “We’ll bring this up to the others – whatever we decide to do, we’re only going to get one shot at this. We need to make it count.”

He turned to me, making sure I caught his eye. “I mean it Rachel. I agree we’ve got something here, but you can’t go off on this one early.”

I thought about the money Jake still didn’t know about, and hopefully now that it had been closed, he never would. It wasn’t like I hadn’t already concluded I needed to rein myself in a bit, and something like this… it wouldn’t do to go off like a bull in a china shop.

“Yes, Prince Jake.”

Jake glared and pushed me. I didn’t care. Tonight was a victory.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading the next installment of this series. The next story in this series will begin shortly. Reviews are appreciated, but most importantly I hope you all enjoyed and look forward as much as I do to the development of this series! Special thanks to my wife for her tolerance to the time this hobby takes, to K.A. Applegate for this universe, and all of you. Note that Chapman’s open hatred of Visser Three is canon in book 2 of the series; a plot point that was apparently sadly forgotten or abandoned.
> 
> Kindest Regards,
> 
> Penguin45


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